


On the Ocean Blue

by NikoArtagnan



Series: Tales From the Ocean Blue [1]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Blood and Gore, Blood and Torture, Explicit Language, F/F, F/M, Gender Confusion, Genderfluid Character, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Past Forced Pregnancy, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Manga Spoilers, Mental Breakdown, Mental Instability, Minor Character Death, Multi, Sexual Assault, Slavery, domestic abuse, especially for recent chapters, gendered slurs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-03
Updated: 2018-01-09
Packaged: 2018-05-11 07:39:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 32
Words: 151,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5619028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NikoArtagnan/pseuds/NikoArtagnan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>She was always just an ordinary girl...until the day she wasn't.</i>
</p><p>An outcast from Earth is flung headfirst into a hostile, unforgiving world and finds themselves tagging along with a very particular crew of misfit pirates, and their captain, a boy who wants to be King of them all. </p><p>But this isn't the world of One Piece you know, and there are terrible things lurking in the shadows...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Excerpts from the Journal of...

**Author's Note:**

> Block italics denotes journal entries. The first chapter consists of excerpts of journal entries before and after the protagonist enters the One Piece world. Not all of them, just enough to show how she’s doing and whatnot.
> 
> I made up Madison, and Senna, Ohio. If they are real places, my apologies. I also made up a number of islands, to suit my purposes.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A girl writes about her days, and the things that happened to her.

** **

* * *

**DATE:** _January 12 th, 2012_

**MY LOCATION:** _Lewis Family Home_

**PLACE:** _Madison, Ohio_

_My therapist tells me I should write in a journal. I try to tell her that the thoughts in my mind are so chaotic that I can’t order them down properly and that they often degenerate into stories and poems and ideas, but she just smiles at me and pats my leg and says in her ‘I’m so smug and superior to you, plebian’ voice that I have to follow the court’s orders, and the judge went nice on me before, but in my next hearing it could very well go differently if I didn’t have her approval._

_Condescending bitch._

_Mom tells me I should use it when I feel I should, and leave it at that. Mom fought the hardest to get me therapy, after what happened. She fought the hardest to get me some sort of justice, after everything and all. She’s the one who helped me start my revenge, though I don’t think she ever thought it would go this far._

_Anyway…maybe I should introduce myself before I get too much into it. Alex told me that’s what I should do when I start a new journal when I told him about it at the hospital._

_Well then…I’m Kelly Lewis. I’m eighteen years old and I graduated from Central Way High School four months ago. I’m about 5”10 in a pair of sneakers, and I weigh about 260. I use to weigh 290. Yay for weight loss. And dance lessons. I’m pretty good now._

_I have black hair that I keep short around my head, because it’s a pain in the ass to deal with it long and I have the attention span of a water flea. My skin is pale and my complexion clear – much to the envy of my high school peers, because I never dealt with acne or pimples. It still makes me laugh._

_I have dark green eyes that quite a few people say are my only attractive feature. Those guys can all go fuck themselves, IMHO. I wear glasses, but they make me look nice, or so I’m told. I usually only need them for reading, which is even nicer._

_I like comfortable clothes. Who cares if sometimes people mistake me for a guy in them? I don’t. I like comfort, not something supposedly ‘chic’ that will leave my feet and body aching for hours after. Fashion is like God’s way of saying “I really hate women”._

_…Mom tells me I could have a promising career in the art of ‘Being a Grouchy Old Man’. Dad laughs like a hyena whenever she does, and so does Alex._

_They may have a point._

_~KL_

* * *

**DATE:** _October 9 th, 2012_

**MY LOCATION:** _Outside Alamo General Hospital_

**PLACE:** _Senna, Ohio_

_They tried to tell me to apologize to_ him _. Forced me to come to this godforsaken place so that little fuck could bask in the fact that I had to apologize to the douche who raped my best friend, beat me nearly unconscious, and posted pictures of her rape everywhere._

_He was conscious when I came in, though his parents were sure to tell me beforehand that he would never walk again. That the colleges were refusing to let him in, even with all of their money. That people mocked and scorned and hated him. That he would never_ ever _**play football ever again.**_

_LE GASP! My eyes filled with tears and I fell before his bed, weeping hysterically. “Oh, Daniel, I’m so sorry for having caused you this hurt! Please, let me make it up to you, whatever I can do-”_

_Actually, no._

_I didn’t say anything to him, as my lawyer and my mom followed me into the room, his parents standing on either side of his bed. I looked at him, bandaged up and swollen, watching me with eyes that had once seemed so beautiful, and I smiled. I really smiled at him. It felt so easy, to be honest._

_I could feel a sense of relief from Mr. and Mrs. Sampson, Daniel’s parents, and from my lawyer. My mom was smart, though. She knew I wasn’t smiling for the reasons the other adults thought._

_I looked at Daniel, at the boy who’d beaten me senseless. The boy who would have raped me if he hadn’t been forced to leave because his parents were expecting him home. The boy who left me for dead in a park so I had to crawl a painstaking three miles to a road to get help. The boy who’d gone on to rape my best friend because no one believed that a good ole ‘American Boy’ would ever do such a crime and ignored me. The boy who’d tried to rape another girl, if I hadn’t intervened and beaten him senseless. The boy who would have gotten off Scott-free, if I hadn’t worked my ass off to make sure everyone knew just what he had done._

_I looked at Daniel, and began to speak, still smiling._

_“Eat shit and die, you fucking rapist. I hope you get run over by a fucking truck, and God pimp-slaps you straight to hell, you little piece of shit. You don’t deserve anything ever good in your life, and I wish, oh_ God _, how I wish I’d killed you. But death is too good for the likes of you. Enjoy life as a cripple,_ bitch _.”_

_I smiled at my lawyer and my mom, and said as sweetly as I could, in the ensuing shocked silence, “I think I’m done here.”_

_It was worth it._

_Dad gave a hundred bucks when we got home. XD_

_~KL_

* * *

**DATE:** _May 31 st, 2013_

**MY LOCATION:** _Home_

**PLACE:** _Madison, Ohio_

_I’m on house arrest, officially. After I’m done with half a year of house arrest, I’ll have to do thirty days of community service. Mom went to lay down went we got home, tired beyond belief. Dad just smiled approvingly when I told him about what had happened at the court and how I stayed calm._

_It’s a relief to us all, after all the press – both good and bad – we’ve been getting. Mom made a couple a press conferences, to explain why I’d done it. I wrote a letter and everything. Tried not to be too bitter. That was hard._

_Anyway, the judge was a nice guy. He likes me and went very easy on me, my lawyer said with a relieved smile. I know he didn’t like Daniel, after the crippled bitch caused an uproar at the hearing, yelling awful obscenities at Beth and me and at Erin, the girl I saved._

_I’d kept my temper. And it paid off big time. Daniel Sampson’s going to jail – he’ll be kept in solitary for a while. It’s only half a year, but the judge forced the Sampsons to pay half a mil to Morgan and myself both, and he’ll have to go through two years of mandatory community service, then another three years of mandatory anger management classes._

_Abigail Torres – Erin’s mother – came up to us as we left the courthouse, and hugged me tight, while the cameras of the reporters flashed and nearly blinded me._

_“Thank you for saving my daughter. Thank you so much.”_

_That beat any other reward hands down. I couldn’t keep that fuck from touching Beth, but I saved her daughter. At least I did that much._

_Alex called today._

_He wanted my opinion about where he should take Beth out to dinner. He told me, if Beth consented to dating him – or, as he put it “being courted’ – in a few months, we should consider double dating. I told him I wasn’t dating anyone nor would anyone want to date the girl who’d put the ‘All-American High School Football Star’ in the hospital._

_He laughed at me and then asked quite innocently if I was taking Erin out for her birthday._

_I am, but I don’t see the point. Erin’s a good friend, and while she’s got a healthy case of Hero-Worship going on for me, we’re slowly becoming great friends. There’s nothing going on there._

_…I think._

_~KL_

* * *

**DATE:** _December 31 st, 2013_

**MY LOCATION:** _Home_

**PLACE:** _Madison, Ohio_

_Jesus Christ, what a year this has been. I’m so glad it’s over._

_Beth’s doing so much better. She laughs, nowadays. Her mom told me that she’ll more than likely be able to have children in the future, and I’m so glad. Beth wants kids, I know that._

_She spends a lot of time she’s not with me with Alex. He treats her right, like a princess, just like she deserves. He doesn’t push for anything she doesn’t want to do. And he doesn’t blame her._

_Erin and I spent hours online, Skyping. She comes over a lot. She also kissed me. On the cheek. But there was something soft and warm in her eyes that made me feel all mooshy-gooshy inside. I asked her to give me some time to think about and she smiled and nodded. I never thought about my sexual orientation before. Jesus Christ. I mean, I like guys, I know that. Guys arouse me. And there was Lien, too...but that whole mess, I didn't think it meant anything._

_Do...do I like women, too?_

_Whoooo boy._

_…_

_Anyway, Mom and Dad went to a fancy restaurant in Cincinnati to celebrate New Year’s. I convinced them I’d be fine._

_Tomorrow I’m going to Beth's for a sleepover. One Piece marathon, for the win!_

_I’ve got my bag all_

* * *

**DATE:**

**MY LOCATION:**

**PLACE:**

_OH GOD, OH GOD, OH MY FUCKING GOD WHAT THE HELL WHERE THE HELL AM I?!?!?!?!?!?!_

* * *

**DATE:** _I DON’T KNOW_

**MY LOCATION:** _I DON’T KNOW_

**PLACE:** _SOME ISLAND? JESUS I DON’T KNOW!_

_It’s like I’ve wandered straight into a nightmare. I finally managed to find a place to hide from the maniacs chasing me. I don’t know how long I have, but holy shit, I’ve got to get off this godforsaken island._

_I’ll make this quick, then. The roof was literally ripped off my house, and a fucking tornado reached in and scooped me out. I managed to grab my bag and my journal before I went flying into it. I was tossed and turned for hours, before I landed here. I managed to piss off some local crazies who fucking DRINK BLOOD, and I’ve been on the run ever since._

_I also seem to have shrunk a considerable amount. Did I fucking de-age or something? Jesus, I haven’t been in this good of a shape since I was nine. Oh God, am I nine? WTF?!_

_Oh, and another thing…WHERE THE FUCK AM I?!!!!_

_Shit, they’re coming, I’ll write later if I ca_

* * *

**DATE:** _It’s winter, I think_

**LOCATION:** _Sadsen Isle_

**PLACE:** _North Blue… yeah, you read that right._

_How long have I been running? Gods, I don’t know._

_I finally managed to get some time to sit down and think and write in my journal without worrying about whether or not I’ll be killed, but I’m not sure how long it’ll last. Those crazies from the first island I landed on have been hunting me like dogs. I think I finally managed to throw them._

_I wasn’t always so lucky. They managed to grab me twice. Brought me to their castle._

_I don’t want to talk about what happened there. It wasn’t fun. I still wake up from the nightmares, when I can manage to get some sleep._

_I also have magic, apparently. Nearly gave me a heart attack when I was escaping from those blood-sucking freaks of nature’s Castle of Horrors and I fried at least six of them with a blast of fucking lightning. Hurt like hell afterwards._

_I’ve been experimenting, and it seems my powers – so weird to be saying that – are based around the four elements: air, water, fire, and earth. I’m doing pretty well with water, but the others are giving me considerable trouble. Aaagh, I need a chance to sit down and really see what I’m capable of. Fuck that, I need a real teacher. Are there teachers who teach magic here?_

_…Jesus Christ, what am I saying? It’s the **world of One Piece** , I’d be surprised if they didn’t._

_I have magic. **I have magic and I’m in the world of One Piece.** It’s like all my childhood and teenaged dreams have come true at once, but I sort of wish it hadn’t required my nearly being murdered over twenty times for it to happen._

_I’m in the world of One Piece. It sucks so far (blood-sucking demons and unspeakable torture, FTW…not), but I can’t help the excitement I feel. Any fan would._

_But most of the excitement is buried under guilt, terror, and a bone-deep sort of exhaustion that’s been with me for weeks. But I can’t let it take me down. I have to keep moving, keep fighting, and keep living._

_I can’t think about my family or my friends. If I did, I’d collapse. The homesickness takes more out of me than even the fatigue._

_But if I’m right about my magic, my ticket home lies there. So all I have to do is survive and learn more about my magic, develop it further and further until it is strong enough to get me home. In that tornado that brought me here, I felt something just like my magic._

_As I write these words, I know I could make my own tornadoes…in time. I just have to survive that long._

_I sit in the shade of a building, in a city that belches smoke and whose residents won’t notice another poor beggar sitting in the shadows. I feel like I can’t breathe, but that’s probably because of all the smoke. This place certainly isn’t doing my asthma any good._

_But I’m vain enough to appreciate what the past year on the run and the subsequent fighting for my life has done for my figure. Not only am I a lot skinnier, but I’m muscled as all get out. It’s pretty nice._

_And few people are stupid enough to bother a girl who looks like she could knock them out with one hand. Not that most anyone’s going to be bothering me. I’ve been picking up fighting skills left and right. I’ve been taking lessons with anyone and everyone who’ll have me, though I’m anxious to find a Rokushiki scroll. I master that shit, and no one will fuck with me. CP9, bitches._

_There’s a black cat sleeping on my lap, purring silently and soothingly, the way cats have about them when they deign to show affection to someone. He’s been my only friend for the past year, when I rescued him from getting thrown into a cooking pot and got shot in reward. I decided to call him Gin-Aido, for his silver eyes. Gin for short._

_He speaks. Only in short bursts, but he speaks. He tells me in a couple of months, when I’m stronger, he’ll be able to talk more. And he’ll be able to teach me more about my magic! He’s a wee bit sarcastic, but he has a dead-pan sense of humor that very nearly matches mine. It’s absolutely hilarious. And he’s a great guide. He was the familiar of a master sorcerer, who threw him away, and he wanted to stay with me._

_I’ve no idea **why** he wants to be with me, but it’s nice having a friend._

_~KL_

* * *

**DATE:** _May, I think_

**MY LOCATION:** _A Place called Toratega_

**PLACE:** _South Blue_

_I’ve been on the run for two years._

_Gin’s been teaching me about who I am, which is something called a Magus. Apparently, I have the blood of the Magi in my veins (I wanted to make a Labyrinth of Magic joke, but it didn’t seem the time), and I have it pretty strongly, too. Gin says I must have it from both sides of my family in equally strong doses, and that it probably comes from my parents. Gin’s also been pretty tight-lipped about where he thinks the bulk of my powers comes from beyond that, because he tells me I shouldn’t have this many Daemons after me. Not as an untrained Magus._

_I’ll have to ask Mom when I get home, because I’m pretty sure I don’t have any super-powered folks in my lineage. And I’m fairly certain my parents aren’t either. I mean, my mom’s a divorce lawyer and my dad’s a businessman/chef. I’m pretty sure they can’t do magic._

_Apparently, those demons have been hunting me because the magic in my blood is so strong it could give them eternal life or some shit._

_Oh look, a Black Bird reference. It’s pretty fucking horrifying when it’s actually true. Christ Almighty would those fucks try and rape me? Dear God._

_I’ve been running and trying to learn and trying real hard not to die, leapfrogging all over the islands with my magic, though I can’t enter the Grand Line._

_I haven’t had two seconds to think straight. Those things – Daemons, they call themselves, the fucking “nobility of the Makai” – have been hunting me for all this time. And they’re not the only ones hunting me. I’ve been pretty low-profile most of the time, but it seems like when humans discover who I am – or better yet, what my blood does – they go a little crazy, trying to capture me to drain my blood. Apparently my blood can do a great deal of things – heal the badly injured, bring a field of crops to flourishing life for years, and create beautifully enchanting jewels when frozen._

_It’s pretty fucking horrifying, because along with those admittedly cool things (which humans are NEVER content with, ungrateful bastards) I found something terrifying out on one of the last islands I was on, which was that, as the crazy old lady who kidnapped me said, “the issue of your body will possess the powers of the Magi, and give strength and honor to your husband’s family.”_

_Which means all the crazy humans want to rape me and force me to bear their or their son’s children._

_On that island, it was the first time I ever killed a human. I killed multiple humans. I had to do it. I was protecting myself. I had to protect myself. I couldn’t just take their memories like I’d always done. That wouldn’t have worked._

_Humanity is ugly, I realized. You can’t trust humans. Not with their greed and avarice. They’d all bleed me dry to further their own gains. But then again, this is the world with the horrible Tenryubito, wide-spread slavery, the corrupt World Government, and pirates who rule the seas._

_Man, I knew humanity was horrible before, why is this so surprising to me now?_

_…Maybe it’s because I was never really exposed to it, beyond what happened to me and my friends by that raping Neanderthal. I mean, I saw the burnings, the bigotry, the hate, the wars, and the desolation on the TV, but I was never really exposed to it like I have been here. I’ve never lived in poverty before. Here, poverty was inevitable, because I had no money, no knowledge of how the money system even worked, despite my near-religious devotion to the series. It was only my knowledge of the series that kept me from getting too freaked out by the weirdo, physics-defying aspects of this place._

_Anyway, I finally managed to find some solace on an island protected by enormous tigers. I thought I was going to die on my little sail boat, chased by those godforsaken monsters who’ve been hunting me for the past year, but I managed to rustle up a Jump (a teleport, essentially) to take me and Gin to a safe place, which apparently was this island._

_I thought the tigers – and their many brethren who wander this island – would have eaten me, but they greeted me like I was an old and dear friend of theirs._

_This’ll be a good place to rest. Gin says the tigers will protect me._

_The tigers – at least, the two Guardian ones, they are called Arashi and Tega – can speak. They tell me that they will protect me, but I can stay here for only three years before the demons will find me. Three years to learn from the immense libraries deep within the mansions the tigers took me to in the middle of the island._

_I can do it, though. Mom says I have the determination of the Devil when I really put my mind to something._

_I will get home._

_~~I want to see my family again~~ _

_I can do this._

_~KL_

* * *

**DATE:** _Arashi says it’s winter, though it still feels just as hot and muggy as it ever was._

**LOCATION:** _Toratega Island Mansion, my study_

**PLACE:** _South Blue_

_It’s winter, but it still feels hot and humid here. I think my magic has burned away all of my asthma, because it’s not bothering me as much. I don’t need my glasses for anything but reading, and even that’s slowly disappearing. A year has passed._

_And I’ve been training._

_My repertoire of spells has grown. There are hundreds of things I can now do with the magic boiling in my veins. My control over water is growing day by day, and so is my control over air, but fire, earth, and their respective spells are still beyond me._

_Gin is a fucking slave driver. That little shit apparently knows fucking Rokushiki, and has been, in his words, “whipping my lazy ass into shape”, before he’ll teach me. He gets the tigers to chase me around every goddamned morning, and then he has me do weight lifting until I pass out. Then it’s another race around the island before dinner. I train my magic every moment in between._

_~~I don’t want to think about my family. God, do they think I’m~~ _ ~~dead _?_~~

_Gin says he’s not the have-all, know-all on magic. Once I gain a basic knowledge of all four elements and their spells, I’ll have surpassed his knowledge. I know he’s worried about me getting rid of him like his last (shitty) master did, but Gin’s my friend. I won’t leave him._

_And besides, he still needs to teach me Rokushiki._

_…I haven’t really thought about the strangeness of this all. I mean, Good God, I’m on an island inhabited by **talking** tigers, practicing my **magic** , aided by my **talking black cat** , who’s going to teach me **Rokushiki** , in the middle of an ocean that I had thought was **FICTIONAL**._

_But the thing is…It doesn’t seem strange. At all._

_Practicing my magic, learning how to fight, talking with animals – it feels as natural as breathing. I like it. I really like it. I’m not so angry anymore. My temper doesn’t randomly explode. I’m not so bitter as I was. I don’t feel like I’m holding the world on my shoulders in terms of what I feel, if that makes any sense. This place feels as much like home as my real home ever did._

_I know most of the tigers on the island by name now, and they welcome me with open arms, when they aren’t chasing me around the island. I don’t have to worry about if I say something wrong or do something wrong they’ll get offended or never speak to me again or things will get uncomfortable._

_Sure, I’ve had a few breakdowns. But that was mostly about…_

_..._

_Damn it, stop tearing up. I’m fucking stronger than this._

_I’ll get home to them. I just have to learn how. My magic holds the key to getting home, though I haven’t read anything in the thousands of books I managed to pour over. But there are still plenty of books left._

_And this is the world of One Piece._

_I’ll find a way to get home. And I’ll get stronger in the process._

 

_..._

_…I feel like the theme for ‘Team America’ should be playing now. LOLOLOL, wow I’m dumb…_

_Ah well, time for bed._

_~KL_

* * *

**DATE:** _Spring! God, it feels nice. Wait…why is it that winter is still hot but spring isn’t? The hell?_

**MY LOCATION:** _Toratega, like usual_

**PLACE:** _The Grand Ole Mangrove Tree I found._

_Lunchtime, woot._

_Gin insisted I eat outside, as the day was so good. Arashi took me to this enormous mangrove on the outskirts of the island, and I ate lunch there with the tigers from the local tribe milling underneath. I know they’re allies of mine, but they’re still wild animals. Not going to risk climbing down there and hanging out._

_I’m doing so much better in my studies. My repertoire is increasing day by day._

_I haven’t blown myself up in ages! XD_

_I’m slowly starting to master water. Air’s coming along fine too. Minor control of earth. I still suck at fire. Fuck._

_Gin tells me I expect too much out of myself. I tell him I want to fry those fucking demons into next week if they ever come near me._

_Fire would be the perfect weapon against those maniacs. But since that bolt of lightning I conjured up early on, fire’s been extremely difficult and near impossible for me to use._

_I don’t have much longer. Gin usually gives me a half hour after lunch before he begins bitching again._

_But I can feel the difference in my body. I’m goddamn strong, now._

_THOUGH THAT STUPID FUCK STILL HASN’T TAUGHT ME ANY ROKUSHIKI ARRRRRRGH._

_~KL_

* * *

**DATE:** _Man, I don’t know. I think it’s winter? Who the fuck knows anymore._

**MY LOCATION:** _Toratega_

**PLACE:** _The Mansion_

_The tigers tell me I leave tomorrow. The demons know I’m here. I must pack and be ready to leave at noon. Gin sits on my lap, calming my trembling. The fear I thought I’d left behind when I came to this island and managed to leave behind those monsters has returned in force._

_I know I’m strong. I know I can fight like mad. I’m starting to learn Rokushiki – fucking **finally** – and I mastered water and air and their respective spells. Earth and fire – being so fundamentally different to the elements I know - will take me some time, though._

_But I’m scared. There, I said it._

_Jesus Christ, I haven’t been this scared since I was at that park, fighting to stay alive after that little fuck beat me almost to death._

_I don’t want to die._

_Journal, this may be the last time I write in you for a while. I’ve been somewhat diligent about writing here on Toratega, but something tells me that will have to stop until I find a place to hide. Tega has asked me to take her runt daughter with me, and I’ve agreed. A beautiful little tiger cub, orange and white and black. Tega let me name her. Shere Khan. She’ll be fucking King of the Tigers. I don’t care if she’s a girl. Gin says she will be a good familiar for me._

_Anyway, it’s back to the hunt, Kelly._

_But this time, the hunted can fight **back**._

_~KL_

* * *

**DATE:** _Mina told me it’s March 29 th._

**MY LOCATION:** _Aratuck Island, Mina’s Ramen Shop_

**PLACE:** _East Blue_

_I managed to find an island where the monsters couldn’t find me. The people welcomed me with open arms, cheering on “The Most Exalted Magus”. Fucking strange, but hey, I’d rather have adoration than fangs at my neck._

_They gave me a house on top of the hill, away from the village proper. Apparently it once belonged to a Magus! I couldn’t fucking believe my luck._

_They’d fully stocked it once they’d learned I wanted to stay. There was a feast beforehand, a grand one, then a gorgeous lady called Mina took me up there. I nearly passed out with exhaustion._

_The next day, I met with the Elders, who granted my request to stay a while on the island. They only requested that I give a drop of blood to the soil once a month. Hell, I can do that._

_Mina’s smiling at me again. Jesus, she’s beautiful. Long, luscious blonde hair that falls in her face, a warm, smoky voice, a killer bod, and one hell of a brain between her ears. She’s been catching me up to date on everything going on in the world proper. She found out I loved to draw and has been encouraging me to do more. Bought me drawing stuff and everything. Been_

_I’ve never had anyone look at me the way she is. Hell, I’ve never had anyone even regard me with the remotest bit of attraction – sexual or otherwise._

_Except Erin, but I’m pretty sure that was just Hero-worship._

_But then again, I’m pretty toned and fucking hot now, so perhaps it’s not too surprising._

_…Actually, yes it is. Jesus, have you **seen** that woman?_

_Fuck it, I don’t care if she just feels pity for the new girl or awe at my being a Magus. If she invites me out on a date or to her bed, I’m going to accept._

_Jesus Christ, I feel like my face is on fire. Is that what they mean by ‘bedroom eyes’?_

_Hoo boy._

_…Gin’s laughing at me again._

_~KL_

* * *

**DATE:** _May 1 st, still don’t know the year._

**MY LOCATION:** _Aratuck Island, my house_

**PLACE:** _East Blue_

_It’s my birthday. I’ve outgrown my original age, I can tell. I’m pretty sure I’m 19, now._

_Mina’s in my bed, dead to the world. I look back at her as I write this, and I can’t stop smiling. Good God, she’s beautiful._

_We’ve been together for a year-ish. We don’t get any grief from the people of this island. It feels nice. I mean, we get some grumbles and stuff, but nothing like the vitriolic hate we’d get from people back home._

_She moved in two months ago. She moved in and she’s the best goddamned assistant I could ever find._

_It’s my job, now, to help out with problems people have. To help them out with magics and spells and whatnot. Sort of like the witches did on ‘Kiki’s Delivery Service’._

_It’s tons of fun._

_But I haven’t really thought about going home._

_I look back at Mina and something twists in my gut at the thought of leaving her._

_She’s so bright and beautiful. She smiles and rubs my back and cooks me food, and sings like a fucking siren. We have the greatest of arguments, and the make-up sex is fabulous. Hell, sex with Mina is just pretty damned awesome._

_I’ve never been the greatest fan of sex, back on Earth. It’s tiresome and kinda painful, and I’ve done it with men and women. The only person I ever really enjoyed it with was Lien, but that was awkward in itself, as it was our respective first times. And considering how that all ended up…_

_But with Mina?_

_I feel loved. I_ laugh _when we’re together, and I’ve never done that before. I didn’t think it was possible to feel so much, and to be able to give so much in return. We made love, as cliché as that sounds. She saw me, saw all of me, and said I was beautiful._

_Christ, I’m so in love with this woman it hurts._

_A knock at the door. I wonder if it’s the Elder’s messenger. I know they wanted to talk to me about something._

_They’ve been pretty odd. Looking at me strange. So have the villagers. Asking me why I don’t give more of my blood._

_It’s getting strange, here. Need to be on my guard. Gin and Shere can now use my magic to grow to adult forms. I now can feel them in my heart, and Gin tells me he can feel me in his, and so can Shere. Gin tells me that the two of them have become my familiars. I’m becoming a proper Magus, he said._

_Gin’s also convinced me to be ready to leave at any time. I have a sack that the former Magus left behind, and it’s a sack of Infinity. I thought I would cry when I found it. It’s so amazing, and Gin says that a Sack is every Magus’s best friend._

_Everything essential I have stuffed into it. It never leaves my side._

_It would be so easy to let my guard down._

_But I can’t. Not even in this slice of paradise I’ve found._

_~KL_

* * *

**DATE:**

**MY LOCATION:** _A cruise ship traveling to Loguetown_

**PLACE:** _East Blue_

_Oh God._

_Oh God._

_I still feel her blood on my hands. The pain, the fear, the terror._

_I never even got to tell her I loved her._

_They tied me up. Whipped me raw. A whip for each villager. They’d get the blood from it, the Elders said. Blood to cure all ills. Then they would bleed me dry. Aratuck would prosper for centuries, they told me. It was a sacrifice for the greater good. They caged Gin and Shere, who screamed for me, and told me they would be eaten. Their corpses, after I died. Food for their families._

_They whipped me. Over, and over, and over again. The villagers crowded below, howling like dogs. A thrashing mob. Laughing and pointing and cheering with every strike of the whip._

_Then Mina…_

_Oh God, **Mina**._

_I woke up four days later on a cruise ship. The captain told me he fished me, Gin, and Shere from the water. We had been surrounded by wreckage, and he assumed we had been the survivors of a crash. I affected amnesia, and bargained with the captain to pay him a great deal in return for him taking me to Loguetown without putting me on the guest register. From Loguetown I can head to the Grand Line. Gin tells me I should be fairly safe from the Daemons there. That means all I’ll have to worry about are the humans. Hoo-rah._

_We stopped on an island, and I was left alone for the night. I drank myself into a stupor. It rained._

_Days later, as I sit here, on the bed in the tiny little cabin I’ve been allotted, with Gin in his big panther form so I can rest my still aching back against his warm side, Shere draped over my feet, as big as she could be in this tiny place, I look at the newspaper on of the cabin boys had brought me, my Infinity bag resting against my hip. It survived too._

_In big letters, the newspaper’s headline reads: “ARATUCK ISLAND WIPED OFF THE MAP, NO SURVIVORS”_

_I’m so tired. I’ve been crying off and on for the past three days. The grief and hatred in me seem to consume me. The guilt for all the lives lost is pretty big too, even though they wanted to kill me. But mostly I mourn for Mina._

_Gin tells me that one of the books I took from the old Magus’s house will teach me how to create limiters for myself. I’m not sure I should, to be honest._

_Are all humans like the ones on Aratuck?_

_I can’t help but look at every human who passes with suspicion. My mind is always, always, always thinking about ways to neutralize and eliminate the potential threats I see around me. I don’t speak to other people. I don’t like being touched._

_I wasn’t exactly the most trusting person at home. But now I find I can only trust the animals around me. And of course, my most loyal friends, Gin and Shere Khan._

_I think I know now why Fisher Tiger hated humans so much._

_I don’t blame him, to be honest._

_Because once who’ve been exposed to the very worst of humanity, it’s hard to keep your faith in its “inherent goodness”._

_Gin tells me to sleep. Shere rumbles her agreement by my feet._

_I think I will._

_I’m so damned tired._

_~KL_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The cover was designed by the absolutely wonderful birdfunk, an artist on Tumblr. Go give her lots of love, because she deserves it.


	2. To the Grand Line

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kelly has her first encounter with the Straw Hat pirates, and makes a plan that will hopefully get her to the Grand Line with her sanity and skin in tact.
> 
> It's not like everything's going to go immediately sideways, right?
> 
> ...Right?

There was a woman walking down the pounded dirt road that snaked through the main area of Loguetown. This was where the city's vendors offered a wide array of products for sale to the native people, the tourists, the Marines, and pirates who passed through.

She was fairly tall, about 5”9 in a pair of worn sandals. She wore oversized, baggy clothing chosen specifically to hide both the fact that she was a woman, and that she was a fighter. But a very careful observer would be able to note the swell of breasts beneath the jacket and the faint outline of muscled arms and legs as they pressed against the fabric.

Most people took one look at her and assumed male and nonthreatening. It was an impression she worked hard to cultivate.

After all, it was always better to be a man alone than a woman alone. And no one had ever gone astray by letting potential enemies think they were weaker than they already were.

Her dark hair was about shoulder-length, held out of her eyes by a dark headband and braided back severely. She had a mouth that seemed made for kissing, wide and sensuous, though the effect was slightly dimmed by the scar that slashed the right side of it, pulling them down into a hint of sneer. Her eyes were hidden behind a pair of enormous sunglasses, and slung over one arm was a dark blue satchel shot through with gold strands.

She could have been any one of the pirates, bounty hunters, or fighters who passed through the gates of Loguetown on her way to the Grand Line, but perhaps the strangest thing about her were her two companions.

Walking close by her feet were two cats – one orange, the other black.

But they seemed fairly ordinary and she certainly wasn’t the first to have cats as pets and come through Loguetown. A careful observer, however, might see stripes of black in the orange cat’s coat as the sun danced of its fur, and that the black cat’s eyes were silver.

But there were no careful observers on the streets of Loguetown who cared to look twice at what appeared to them to be a very ordinary man walking down the street and causing no harm to anyone.

The woman stopped and sniffed the air.

“Gin, Shere, I smell goat kabobs. Want to go get some?” Even her voice could have belonged to a man, being dark and warm, like finely aged whiskey.

Both cats immediately began purring and twining about her legs.

She snorted. “You little beggars. All right then, let me see if I can rustle up some money…I got some from the cruise ship. I’ll need a bit more. And might’s well get some extra money for the trip ahead.” She looked carefully around, only to smile when she saw a very rich looking woman speaking pointedly to a harried looking silk vendor. And the fat money purse at her belt.

She grinned. “Wait here, Shere, Gin.”

* * *

The goat kabobs were delicious. And the seller willingly chopped up several plates of meat for her piggish cats.

Kelly Lewis sat in the back of the restaurant, her back nestled into the corner, eyes watchful behind the enormous sunglasses she’d snatched from a particularly lecherous man she’d encountered on the cruise ship. Shere Khan, safe behind her glamoured disguise of a regular orange cat, lay in her lap, belly distended from goat meat. Gin curled up on the table, appearing to be asleep but really just as watchful and observant as his Mistress.

She sighed. She’d asked around about any ships heading to the Grand Line, but few people were. The Marines had a ship going out in a week, but they’d refused her request to take her with them. And she _really_ didn’t want to deal with anyone associated with the World Government for long periods of time.

She’d thought about asking some pirates. But she trusted none of them, seeing the greed and avarice in their eyes and hands. She could trust none of them not to cut her throat in her sleep or try and throw her cats overboard. She was _not_ going with any of them.

All she wanted was a ship with people on it who wouldn’t bother her, who would get her to the Grand Line and not ask any questions concerning why. It wasn’t like she didn’t have money or anything, studying the fat purse she’d nicked from the rich lady.

She peeled off her gloves and studied her wrists and palms for a moment.

Barely visible in the faded light of the restaurant, dark silver scales glimmered faintly.

Another problem she had to deal with – her scales. She’d noticed them a couple of years ago, but hadn’t really given them much thought, and even when they had spread she had refused to give them much thought, as their implications had made her shake.

They’d grown considerably over the years, forcing her to wear her clothes that covered every inch of her body. She’d discovered early on that a majority of humanity did _not_ like anything that looked human and had scales, a prejudice that even the show had barely touched on. Even Mina hadn’t been too happy with them.

She closed her eyes and breathed in deep, trying not to remember some of the close calls she’d had over the years because of those damnable things. She had soon discovered that it wasn’t for her blood that (a majority) of humans chased her – the legends of the Magi weren’t as well-spread as she thought – but for the fact that she was turning into a fucking _Sea Snake_.

And she was a very, very valuable commodity in the world of slavery. The humanoid sea snakes had hid in the very deepest parts of the ocean or found Magi for protection, or maybe they’d gone back to the Goddess of the sea, who’d created them along with the Fishmen – the tales weren’t clear, but they’d all but vanished. No one was stupid enough to go hunting them in the deep ocean, or in the New World, where they were rumored to live. You _couldn’t_ find Sea Snakes on ‘civilized’ land anymore.

 _‘Except for me,’_ Kelly thought, rubbing a hand over her face as she shuddered. She’d been caught only twice. Only twice. Like her time trapped in the castles of the Daemons, it was not an experience she was keen on repeating. Thank God people just straight out hadn’t believed the slavers when they’d boasted about having a silver-scaled Sea Snake in their cages, and she’d been able to escape before they could show evidence.

Her fingers ran over the rough surface of the tarnished silver, reflexively touching the lighter, scarred bands around her wrists. She had the scales everywhere. On her arms, her legs, her hips, shoulders…but none grew on her back. Not surprising, considering the scar tissue there.

While she admired the silvery color, it was more than a little horrifying. _She was turning into a completely different race._ She had been born a human and god damn it, a human she wanted to stay.

There were some pretty damn cool advantages to being a Sea Snake – extra strength, speed, endurance, and she was a little bit sure that she might be developing poison glands – but it was still terrifying. She’d dealt with the magic, with the talking cats, etc, etc, so on and so forth, but _this_ …

She liked being human, preferred it, actually. It allowed her to be inconspicuous. She had enough trouble being a human Magi, anyway!

And besides, she was going home, and her parents would fully expect her to be human when she got there.

Gin cracked open one eye. “But you were never really human. Magi rarely are.”

“I was born of a human mother and father, though.”

“Doesn’t always matter. And besides, I highly doubt that.”

Kelly sighed and rested an elbow on the table. “Are you _ever_ going to clarify that?”

“Nope.”

“Lovely.” Kelly stood up, Shere firmly clasped in her arms. “Anyway, let’s go see if we can rustle up a ride. I don’t want to be on this island any longer than I have to be, though I may have to make a stop at some shops before we do. Once I’m in the Grand Line, those fucks won’t be able to get at me as easily, right?”

“Correct,” Gin replied, and leapt onto her shoulder. “The magnetic fields there should prove ample barrier against most of them. If we get to the New World, we will be even more protected from all but the strongest. I know you want to go home, but-”

“I can’t even begin to do that unless I get a real teacher with a deeper knowledge of what it means to be a Magus and I find a safe place to hide out. I planned on going to the New World, anyway, baka Gin. If there’s a Magus strong enough to teach me in this world, he or she’ll be there,” Kelly said as the black cat curled around her shoulders and she tucked Shere into one of the outside pockets of the Infinity sack, so she could peek her head out when she woke up. She quickly walked out the door and down a small alley.

“…Mistress…have you considered going to the Straw Hat pirates?”

She froze, then kept walking. “No, can’t say I have…You being in my mind is rather annoying, Gin-Aido.”

“Mistress, from what I saw when I was helping you rebuild your mindscape, the Straw Hat pirates are an honorable group and their Captain even more so. And besides, we need to get to the Grand Line and the New World. We both know they’ll get there. They may ask questions, but I very much doubt their navigator will refuse, especially with the money you have and how hard you’ll work,” He said.

“I don’t want to fucking interfere with the events of the story, Gin. Who fucking knows what will happen if I’m there? What will change? And I know perfectly well that Luffy will want me for his crew after he sees what I’m capable of. In the New World Arc, the Straw Hat pirates have _nine_ members.”

“There’s nothing that says you can’t be the tenth,” he offered in a reasonable tone.

“I want to go _home_ , Gin. _Home._ To my family and friends and where I’ve always lived. To my house and my parents who are probably freaking the fuck out over my disappearance. I’ve only gotten fear and hate and greed from the people here. Why should I _want_ to stay? The only reason I’m going to the New World is because it’s the best place to find a teacher, to find out what’d happening to me, or maybe even to find someone who can send me home,” She said, fingers trembling.

“But what will they say when they’ve seen the new you? Mistress, you’re not even completely human anymore. Have you thought of _that_? You also know that the Straw Hats will easily accept your more scaly bits.”

Kelly sighed, and rubbed a hand over her face. “I can’t think about that. Besides, I knew the manga and anime characters. Not the people…Anyway, while we’re here, let’s do some shopping. I need to pick up some things and fleece a few more marks before we get to the Grand Line. Something tells me I won’t be able to pick-pocket people so easily there.”

“ _Mistress…_ ”

“What?” She asked, walking out of the alley. “I need new clothes and money. I need some undergarments, which I can’t create with my powers. And besides, it’s not like Luffy and the others will even be here today. They’ve probably already come or have yet to, considering the fact that Smoker is still in charge around here. We can go look for a ship after.”

* * *

Kelly yawned as she walked out of the small store with her bag in one hand, which she quickly stuffed into the Infinity Sack. She’d also stopped at another store.

But she had no idea if she would ever find the courage to use what she had bought there. It still hurt.

“Yosh! Let’s find a ship to get us off this bumfuck island!” She declared, determinedly cheerful. Several people turned her way, glaring, and a hot blush stole over her cheeks.

“ _Moron_ ,” Gin whispered into her neck, curled once more around it.

“Hahahaaaa…many pardons,” she said and immediately made her exit.

Well, she tried to. As she turned to her left, she crashed into another person, making her stagger back, and making the other person fall to the ground.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” Kelly said, kneeling to help the other person up, only to freeze in shock.

It was a woman, wearing a white shirt with yellow stripes, a light brown miniskirt, and strappy, heeled sandals. Her skin was fair and her hair was the color of tangerines…

… _God damn it._

The navigator of the Straw Hat pirates, “Cat Burglar” Nami, groaned.

“It’s okay. H-help me up,” The orange-haired girl asked, and it snapped Kelly out of her shock. She quickly hauled the other female to her feet, before kneeling back down and picking up the bags that had spilled. The Magus quickly handed them over to the navigator.

“Many pardons,” Kelly said with as firm a smile as she could manage, one that was returned by the navigator.

“God damn it, ask her! You may not get another chance!” Gin hissed in her ear.

Kelly closed her eyes for the briefest of moments. Oh, what the hell. It wasn’t like she could be sure that any other ship would actually make it to the New World. At the very least, these guys would get to Fisman Island, and maybe there she could get some answers about what she was turning into.

“Ah, excuse me, but you wouldn’t happen to be going to the Grand Line, would you?”

Nami stopped and looked warily at her. “Why do you want to know?”

“Because I want to go there myself. I’m willing to pay for and work for my room and board, if your ship has one to spare. I’m getting pretty desperate here. No one else seems to be going that way, I don’t have the sea skills to take a ship there myself.” Kelly admitted.

Nami crossed her arms over her chest and studied her for a long, long while. Kelly restrained the urge to fidget before the navigator nodded. “Is that so? Show me the money, first. Then we’ll negotiate.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“It’s Nami. If we’re going to be traveling together, you should call me by my name…Are those cats?”

Kelly grinned and gently petted Shere’s head, which was poking out of the Sack. Gin purred around her shoulders. She had no attention of ever doing anything that would attach her to the Straw Hats, and treating them all formally, as a servant to an employer did, should do the trick.

“Aye, they’re my friends. Will they be a problem, Ma’am?”

She held out an arm, and let Gin walk to the entranced navigator, who cuddled him as the little flirt purred like a motor. Kelly sniggered as the navigator all but melted. Who knew tough-as-nails Nami was such a sucker for a cat?

“Of course not. Come on, you can help me carry my bags, and we’ll negotiate as we do it.”

Kelly closed her eyes. What the hell had she just gotten herself into? Was she _insane_? Asking for a ride on the _Merry Go_?

Ah well. What was life without a little risk? And she knew that the ship would be leaving by the end of the day, so it was for the best. The sooner she was in the Grand Line, the better.

She took Nami’s bags and gave a courtly bow, winking at the girl. “Lead on, my fair lady!” She declared, only to blink in confusion as Nami’s eyes widened and she blushed.

“…Are you okay?” Kelly asked.

“A-ah, yes, I’m fine. Let’s go.”

* * *

Kelly felt the ache in her back just before Nami said it, distant eyes turned to the sky: “There’s going to be a storm.”

“Ma’am, how do you know?” Kelly asked, masking the pain from her aching back easily.

“The air pressure is dropping,” Nami said, and quickly turned to her. “Grab the bags and let’s go. I need to get the rest of my crew.”

Kelly grabbed the bags, Shere leaping into her Sack, while Gin curled back around her neck, and quickly trotted after the orange-haired girl. There was a distant look in her eyes, and Kelly could have sworn she felt the sea itself move in Nami’s bones at that moment.

 _‘Small wonder the girl’s so competent at navigating. Christ Almighty,’_ Kelly thought with awe. After Kelly had shown Nami the amount of money, the rest of the trip had gone fairly easy. Nami was a good conversationalist, and Kelly felt somewhat comfortable around her.

Not completely, because that niggling fear was always there, no matter what she did, no matter who she would meet, that fear that the person across from her wanted her blood and her power. Wanted her dead or raped and dead.

But Kelly thought that her short sojourn would not be half as bad as she had thought. All she had to do was keep her powers hidden, and she would be able to leave just fine.

 _‘I’m such an optimist,’_ she thought with a sigh.

“Murphy’s Laaaaaaaw,” Gin crooned in her ear, and she restrained the urge to throttle him.

* * *

**DATE:** _I’m fair certain it’s May 19 th, though I’ve no idea what the year is in this world._

 **MY LOCATION:** _…The pirate ship Merry Go_

 **PLACE:** _Heading towards the Grand Line…I GET TO SEE LABOON, WHOOOOO!_

_My introduction to the crew went fairly well. I was with Nami when she met up with the rest of her crew and she quickly introduced me before they all realized Luffy was on the execution platform. I got a suspicious look from Zoro, a glare from **Sanji** of all people (I don’t think he realized I was female, that was hilarious) when he saw I was standing so close to his precious Nami-swan, and a curious look from Usopp._

_Then they all realized Luffy was about to be executed and I was forgotten. Which was good thing, because I could barely manage to keep the smile off my face or from voicing the manic shrieks of joy my Inner Fangirl (who hadn’t been killed off because of my experiences, strangely enough) was letting lose in my brain._

_I helped Usopp carry the Elephant Blue Fin Tuna (that’s the proper name, right?) back to the ship, easily getting around that idiot Mohji and his pet lion. Nami showed me where my room would be – a tiny closet of a room, but more than adequate for me, Gin, and Shere._

_The storm began raging in earnest, and I helped Nami and Usopp keep it anchored so that Luffy, Zoro, and Sanji would be able to get back on. But I couldn’t help glorying in the rain and wind and the tempest thrashing and singing around us. It was a surreal, but amazing experience, to say the least. I felt like my insides and head were stuffed full of power and it felt so DAMNED good._

_I had always liked storms, but this…This was a different thing entirely._

_GOD DAMN, I’m still shaking from it._

_Anyway, I formally met Luffy during the absolutely sumptuous dinner Sanji made, and he seems to approve. Especially after Nami whacked him upside the head. Shere likes him. Spent the whole of dinner purring on his lap – the little flirt!_

_I swear, she’s sometimes worse than Gin._

_Sanji still doesn’t realize I’m a woman. I’m still giggling over it._

_But goddamn the boy can COOK. Better than my Dad, and he ran restaurants for thirty years! He smiles too, in a way that sort of (stupidly, clichély) reminds me of the sun. He laughs and it’s a great thing to hear. I’d like to be his friend. Maybe I could approach him about helping to do the dishes? With this crew, he would have a great amount to deal with._

_~~He sort of reminds me of Mina. His smile is so beautiful, like hers was~~ _

_…_

_Anyway, I think I should be getting to bed. I shouldn’t be thinking about wanting to become friends with any of this crew, for all I find myself trusting them. Trusting them! Trusting humans!? What the hell is wrong with me? Haven’t I learned my lesson by now?_

_But I want to. God how I want to trust them, to become their nakama. To know that someone else would have my back like Beth and Alex did, and not just so they could sink a knife in it, or sell me to slavers._

_But I can’t._

_After all, I won’t be staying._

_~KL_

* * *

The sun was just cresting over the horizon when Kelly stepped out of her room, leaving Gin and Shere napping on the bed, and headed for the upper deck. She wanted to get a good, clean whiff of sea air. It would do her better than anything with caffeine in it, and she would need the strength for dealing with Reverse Mountain.

Hopefully they would reach it today. Would they have to go through that ridiculous Dragon filler arc?

She seriously hoped not. She would very much like to get into the Grand Line sooner rather than later. She could feel the slight prickling on her forearms that always heralded the arrival of the Daemons, at least within a day or so.

She pushed open the door and stepped out into the chilled morning air. She felt herself smile involuntarily as she looked out at the rowdy waves pushing them further along and breathed the sea-salted air in deep. In the distance she could see what she assumed to be Reverse Mountain.

It looked to be a wonderful morning. Kelly grinned involuntarily, basking in the idea that she was fairly safe and that the Straw Hats wouldn’t do anything to hurt her. Nami would kill them if she did. Kelly had given the girl half the contents of the rich lady’s purse as payment, along with a promise of free labor. She heard the soft patter of footsteps behind her, but kept staring out at the ocean, even though her fingers twitched reflexively.

“Ah, you’re up.” Kelly turned to see Nami.

“So are you. Pardon me, ma’am, but you don’t seem the type to be up this early,” Kelly said, nodding respectfully.

Nami sighed and shrugged. “With this crew, I have to be…Well, since you’re up, you can help me with my maps. Follow me.” The two of them walked into kitchen, where Nami spread out some maps. “We’ll reach Reverse Mountain soon. About the rest of your payment – doing minor chores. Are you good with a needle?”

Kelly blinked, then smiled. “Competent, ma’am. My Mama made sure of that.” Kelly had little head for the traditionally feminine jobs, but her mother, having come from a family where such things were mandatory for the women, made damn sure her artistically inclined daughter knew at least some of the things she herself had learned at her own mother’s knee.

“You’ll be doing dishes, helping Usopp repair things around the ship, running errands for us when we reach islands, and some other things when I think of them…I won’t ask you to do the laundry – each of us does our own, but if anyone has any tears or rips in their clothing, do you think you could take care of it?” Nami asked.

Kelly shrugged then had an idea. “If I had the materials, then of course. Ah, ma’am, do you think you could tell me what you know about the Grand Line and how to get in it? I’m not exactly what you call knowledgeable about the sea and the Grand Line in particular. I’d like to learn about weather ‘n what, if you have the time, since it seems best to learn from a navigator.”

Her power _came_ from the sea. (Well, water itself, but hey, technicalities) It seemed almost criminal that she knew so very little about it and what made it work. It would be fascinating to learn about the Grand Line from the woman who would one day become its most legendary navigator.

And besides, if she wanted to get to the New World without the Straw Hats, she needed to know something.

Nami outright _stared_ at her.

“Why?”

Kelly raised an eyebrow. “I want to know. And besides, if I get more time to spend with a lady so beautiful and obviously talented, that’s no real hardship in my books.” And flashed the orangette a smile, casually throwing the flirtation in there. She didn’t mind flirting, with men or women. It was amusing, and a long habit after the chivalrous manners her father had worked to instill in her. And it made people like her a _lot_ more than they planned on doing.

Nami gaped. Obviously she’d had few people express a real interest in her life’s work. It wasn’t like her nakama didn’t understand and appreciate it, but the only one on the ship (so far) that could even come remotely close to having the book-smart intelligence to understand Nami’s dream was maybe Usopp – and _perhaps_ Sanji.

But Usopp didn’t strike her as the type to be able to sit down and listen to someone rant on about the very technical aspects of their passion, and Sanji was an inconsolable flirt. She doubted he would pay much actual attention to the subject, instead of the speaker.

Kelly felt herself blink as a dull flush spread over Nami’s cheeks. “Y-You shouldn’t do that,” she spluttered.

Er…

“Do what, ma’am?” Kelly asked politely, resisting the urge to scratch her head in confusion.

“Sm-smile! Like _that_!”

 _Uh_ …

“…That’s my normal smile, ma’am.”

Nami let out a frustrated sound and turned back to her maps. “Never mind. If you want to learn, sit down and shut up. I’ll be talking a lot to myself.”

“Ma’am yes Ma’am,” Kelly retorted cheekily, getting a snort from the other female.

Kelly leaned forward and paid close attention to the words the navigator was saying, as they sat around the kitchen table.

And for the first time in a very, very long time, Kelly thought she might really, really like another human being. It went beyond the admiration for the two-dimensional character in the manga and anime.

Nami was a good woman, a passionate one. Greedy, yes, and also a thief, but hell, Kelly had her own avarice for jewels and money, and she was _also_ a thief. She couldn’t blame Nami in the slightest.

The door opened and Kelly heard a flamboyant voice ring out.

“Nami-swan! Would you like some coffee this morning, before we head…to…Oh. It’s you,” The cook’s blinding smile vanished when he saw the two women sitting there and leveled a glare at Kelly, who blinked in consternation.

That was going to get real annoying _real_ quick, Kelly realized, and felt a hint of frustration boil up as she looked at him, impeccably dressed and unbearably debonair, even so early in the morning.

She could smell the tobacco, various spices, and the musk of man that made up his personal scent even from so far away. His eyes were the crystal blue of shining oceans untouched by man and his blond hair looked like silk.

The kick of arousal was almost painful, and she wanted to snarl at him. All thoughts of friendship from the previous night were gone. All she could see now was a stupidly flirtatious man who couldn’t see she was a female, obviously thought she was making a move on Nami, and was a perfect amalgamation of two of the only five humans she had ever loved in any world.

Her dad had smelled like a kitchen mixed with fragrant tobacco, even when he had little time to cook, and had always been such a stylish dresser that it had been him, not Mom, who gave her the tips on how to dress to impress. The homesickness she thought she had managed to set aside years ago made her bones ache.

And the rest of him reminded her so much of Mina it was like a kick to the chest, ten times more painful than the arousal.

She fought the tears stinging her eyes with the bitter anger that threatened to explode from her chest.

How _dare_ he smell like her father.

How _dare_ he look so much like Mina.

She wanted, irrationally, hatefully, to make him pay for it. She knew he couldn’t help it, but God Almighty, he made her want to break things. Preferably over his head.

She calmed her rage with a mischievous idea. If he thought she was making the moves on Nami, why not tick him off even more by actually doing it? God, she wanted to…to _niggle_ him somehow. Piss him off as much as he pissed her off.

“Maaaaa, cook-san, Nami- _chan_ here was just giving me a crash course on the sea and on the weather she so adores. It’s been quite a… _educational_ experience, hasn’t it, m’dear?” She turned back to the woman and in a smooth, seamless motion, caught the navigator’s hand and brought it up to her lips, pressing a soft kiss to her palm.

Nami turned crimson, and so did Sanji, but for a much different reason than Nami did. She could practically hear the steam pouring out of his ears and his teeth grinding.

“Ah, anyway, thanks for the lesson, Nami- _chan_. I do _really_ appreciate it. I’m going to go back and check on Gin and Shere Khan, so don’t bother with setting a place for breakfast for me. Call me when we hit Reverse Mountain, if you need my help.”

She grabbed some fruit from the fresh stack in the basket in the middle of the kitchen table and sauntered her way out, catching Sanji’s glare out of the corner of her eye.

“Stop that idiotic glaring, it makes you look like an even bigger moron than you are – which is a pretty substantial fool in and of itself,” she whispered as she passed, and was perversely delighted to hear him actually _snarl_ at her.

Gin would probably call her an idiot, but damn, riling the blond man up felt _really_ therapeutic.

* * *

**DATE:** _May 20 th_

 **MY LOCATION:** _Merry Go, my bedroom_

 **PLACE:** _Heading up Reverse Mountain_

_A quick entry._

_Nami told me that she wouldn’t need my help, as I was technically a guest and admitted to her that I pretty useless on ships. I agreed and decided to barricade myself in my room until we reach Laboon._

_What? It’s not like I ever made any bones about how little I know about ships. I teleported all over the islands, remember? I still don’t the difference between the directions. Starboard, upboard, downboard…whatever the fuck they’re called, I still can’t make any heads or tails between them._

_I probably should, considering the Grand Line is 90% water and you usually need ships to maneuver around, but hell, whatever. Nami will undoubtedly fill me in during the rest of her lectures._

_(Maybe I’ll go out when we hit Reverse Mountain. That’ll be a sight to remember, and Beth would kick me in the shin if I didn’t see it so I could tell her about it)_

_So, about Sanji… Why do I feel like I just through down the bright red gauntlet in front of particularly enraged bull?_

_…Oh God damn it, I pissed off the amazingly talented cook of this ship._

_He’s going to take every opportunity to sabotage my meals, isn’t he? And treat me like Luffy on a food rampage?_

_…I’m an idiot._

_I couldn’t help it, though. Fucker looks just like Mina. Smelled like my Dad, too, which DID NOT help matters at all._

_I’m attracted to him. There, I said it. I always was. When Beth went gaga over Zoro and Nami and Alex over Robin, my eyes always trailed to the cook of the show. He was my ideal man – like a blond Cary Grant who could cook, and had the chivalrous manners of my father. He acted like an idiot around women, but hell, sometimes I didn’t blame him at all, considering Nami and Robin and the beautiful girls he swooned over. And perfection was never really perfection at all, in my books._

_Flaws suit a man better than any notion of ‘perfection’._

_My fascination with him has seemed to carry over into real life. Despite everything I’ve gone through, despite **Mina** …_

_…I’m still attracted to him._

_God fucking damn it all to Hell and back._

_This fucking sucks ass._

_~KL_

* * *

Usopp had come to get her, saying they were heading up the Mountain, and would _he_ like to come see it?

So it wasn’t just Sanji who thought she was a guy, Kelly thought with a muffled snort, even as she pasted on a smile and followed the dark-skinned boy out, initiating a rousing conversation with the sniper that left him with smiles and laughter.

It was easy, she thought, to make them like her.

Oh, Kelly had _always_ been good at making people like her. Teachers, authority figures, judges, potential employers, neighbors, etc. Beth had once called her a champion brown-noser, but Alex had shaken his head.

 _Not a sycophant, no,_ He’d said, with a solemn look in his eyes _, but a spider. You’re very good at manipulating people, Kel, you know that?_

Kelly sighed. She wasn’t a spider, she was just…trying to make sure these people would be very unlikely to stab her in the back.

It was necessary.

After all, these weren’t exactly one-dimensional characters on a page or two-dimensional characters on a screen. They were real people, with depths and sides she’d never seen before. She couldn’t keep thinking of them as _characters._

They were human beings, people, real, and unpredictable.

And they were pirates.

Dangerous ones.

Gin curled around her shoulders, purring to try and alleviate some of the tension in her shoulder blades. But she couldn’t let down her guard. Not even here.

It was a little tiring, to be honest.

* * *

It was a pretty damn amazing sight, as the ship zoomed up the side of Reverse Mountain, the walls of the Red Line looming on either side, the carved stone arches passing so quickly overhead they seemed to be one continuous blur, the spray from the rushing current splashing against her face. It felt like Kelly was in the front seat of a convertible sports car, racing down the highway at top speeds, without a seatbelt.

Terrifying, yes.

But also fucking _spectacular_ to behold.

She noticed that they were coming to the top and quickly sat down, anchoring her ass to the wood with some magic so she wouldn’t go flying off, and pulled Gin into the safety of her arms.

The ship leapt into the air, and Kelly and Gin sniggered as everyone but them went flying into the air, screaming their heads off, before the ship crashed back down and gravity pulled the pirates down with her.

They clung like limpets to various places around the ship, and Kelly just smirked as they zoomed down the other side.

She stood up as they began to gain speed, and laughed.

She thought going up the side of the Mountain had been fast, but this was like a Mach-5 racecar speed.

“Glorious,” She sighed. “Fucking _glorious_. Hell, traveling on this ship is worth it, purely for this.”

Then, a strange booming noise echoed through the area. Kelly restrained the urge to dance around like a maniac. It was _Laboon!_ The cute whale who Luffy would try to beat the shit out of and eventually come to befriend. The little whale who’d once been friends with the Rumbar Pirates. The freaking adorable whale who had no idea his friend Brook was still alive and that the rest of his nakama had not forgotten him, even seconds before death.

She _adored_ Laboon. Back home, she’d had a plushie just like him. And better yet – he was an animal! Not human!

Which meant she could get as attached to him as she damn well felt like.

She could hear Zoro yell “Did you hear that?” to Nami, who simply shrugged.

“Probably the wind going through the strange rock formations around here. There are plenty of them, and any of them could have caused that noise,” she yelled back, and turned her attention to enjoying the ride.

Kelly sniggered helplessly. _‘That’s what_ you _think.’_

She wanted to be able to talk to Laboon. She knew she could communicate with the whale and talk to him, though she would have to be careful about saying anything that would knock the story off-track.

And she didn’t want to be around the ship itself, do anything that would mess up the introduction with Miss Wednesday and that 9 fellow, because with her smart mouth that was inevitable.

She would have to be outside to do that, though.

So, when they passed the Twin Capes, she would have to make a jump for it.

“Come on, Gin. Let’s go get Shere Khan. I want to talk to Laboon, and we need to be outside to do that,” she said, and quickly hurried back to her small room. “And if things go wrong, we won’t be in danger.”

“A wise idea, Mistress. Why do you want to talk to the whale, though?”

Kelly giggled. “Because he’s cute, of course!”

The cat sighed. “…I thought so.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The journal entries will become sporadic for now.


	3. First Impressions, Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sanji, Nami, and Usopp have some thoughts on our protagonist.

**SANJI**

Sanji didn’t trust the guest Nami-san had brought on the ship. The other man was quite handsome, with dark, mischievous eyes and darker hair hair, and a sharply angular face flecked at the edges with some scars. There something almost feminine in that face and in the walk, something that made him want to instinctively fawn over the dark-haired man, but Sanji wasn’t fooled.

It was the face of a consummate _scoundrel_. A man who would take a woman, use her until he was finished, and discard her. He’d seen plenty of them in his time.

He knew Nami-san could handle herself quite well, but those dark, almost painfully exotic eyes seemed to be constantly laughing at them all, just waiting for them to slip up so he could strike. A conman, born and bred.

And when he’d walked in on the two of them talking, cozily, _intimately_ , over the spread of Nami-san’s maps, he knew that their guest was up to no good. Then those steely eyes had turned to him, flashing with some dark emotion (anger at interrupting his seduction of Nami-san, obviously) then turned flinty.

He’d kissed Nami-san’s _palm_! Turned the beautiful woman’s face the color of a tomato, flirting with her, calling her Nami _-chan_.

He fumed as he made breakfast for the crew, remembering the snide words the man had said to him on his way out.

_“Stop that idiotic glaring, it makes you look like an even bigger moron than you are – which is a pretty substantial fool in and of itself,” the man whispered as he passed Sanji, chuckling._

Sanji breathed deeply, trying not to get so angry. If Nami-san wanted him on the ship, on the ship he would stay until he overstepped himself. Then Sanji would have the utmost pleasure of booting the scoundrel off the ship into the ocean himself.

Sanji’s fingers closed painfully tight over the edge of the sink as he remembered how those stormy eyes carelessly sneered at him over the rims of his sunglasses.

Oh, he _definitely_ did not trust Ciel Russo.

* * *

**NAMI**

Nami still wasn’t quite sure what possessed her to take the man on their ship. He had money, yes, but normally she was quite leery about trusting strange men. Especially strange, _handsome_ men.

He had a surprisingly pleasing mixture of feminine and male traits. He was handsome, yes, with the hint of strong shoulders, slightly scarred face, and definite muscles, but there was also something undeniably female about him. He swayed just a bit when he walked, his lips were wide and looked soft, even with the scar pulling them down, and his hair was long, giving a softness to his sharp face.

But there was this sexual _charisma_ about him, this animal magnetism that had drawn her in the most. He reminded her of a predator, dangerous, dangerous, _dangerous_ , but all the more handsome and desirable for it. She knew from her conversations with him that this was a man with intelligence and a skill at manipulation that almost rivaled her own.

He’d been subtly controlling the conversation they’d had in the shops – allowing her to make most of the remarks, of course – but he’d been in control of that conversation.

She’d let him, but only because it was just so stimulating to talk to someone who was very clearly on her level in terms of brain power.

He flirted without even meaning to, though he meant it completely sincerely, and without the slightest clue what that devastating smile could do to those he’d aimed it towards. He was a man only vaguely conscious of the fact that he was handsome, but with the solid, subconscious knowledge that he could do a great deal of damage with it.

But there was a softness there when he spoke about his cats, a love and loyalty returned in full by the sleek Gin and the lovable Shere Khan. There had been a faint hint of exhaustion in those dark green eyes, and perhaps it was for that reason that Nami had agreed, even more so than the money.

Ciel Russo may very well have been an outwardly confident, easy-going man, but on the inside, he was a man tired of running.

She knew what that was like.

She knew it very well.

* * *

**USOPP**

The man intimidated Usopp. There, he admitted it.

In his mind at least, Usopp made a decent effort to be completely truthful. His Mama had taught him that.

And while he had fun making up the stories in his head and boasting about them, he tried his best not to internalize them. Until he got stronger, he wouldn’t be able to face up to the threats they’d face in the Grand Line. He knew he couldn’t get (too) delusional.

But hell, he had fun doing it, and as long as he had his nakama to back him up and a little bit of common sense (a rarity on this ship) about when to stop, he would be fine. And besides, what was wrong with a good story? It amused his captain, too, so what was the harm?

Anyway…back to the guest Nami had brought aboard the ship.

He was scary. He was tall – like Zoro and Sanji tall – with dark eyes and a scarred face. The way he moved reminded Usopp a little too much of a viper, ready to strike. But he had a nice smile and seemed friendly enough, and he adored his cats.

And they seemed to like him right back. Kaya had always said that if a cat really liked someone and deigned to show affection to that person, then that meant they were a good person. Cats were great judges of character.

Unless…were these cats _evil_? He’d heard stories about black cats before! The familiars of witches and evil sorcerers. Perhaps this Ciel Russo was really a sorcerer from a dark and evil castle, come to take their souls and feed them to his cats so they could help him take over the world!

He shivered, and looked back at the man sitting against the upper deck and gulped as those almost predatory eyes met his for one intense moment. Then he quickly turned away, trying his hardest not to shake too badly.

Oh, yes, he was _very_ intimidated by this man.


	4. I Shouldn’t Find This So Funny

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Laboon, and the arrival at Whisky Peak. Kelly wonders about the changes she sees in herself, and if she's the better...or the worse for them.

The moment the Two Capes had come close enough, Kelly leapt out of the ship, Shere tucked into the Sack, Gin stuffed into the pocket pouch in the front of her jacket. She landed easily on the grass and quickly watched the ensuing drama as the Straw Hats saw Laboon and proceeded to freak the hell out.

She cackled as she hid behind a tree at their panic, and proceeded to nearly kill herself laughing as Luffy shot a cannonball into the whale’s belly and then punched it in the eye. She kept giggling even the Straw Hat’s ship vanished into Laboon’s enormous maw and Luffy managed to fling himself on top.

But the humor vanished when she heard Luffy’s screams.

“SPIT THEM UP!” There was pain in his voice. “THEY’RE MY NAKAMA AND WE’RE GOING ON AN ADVENTURE! GIVE THEM _BACK!”_

The smile on her lips faded as a memory forced its way to the forefront of her mind.

_“GIVE HER BACK!” The rain was cold but her tears were so hot. “PLEASE GOD…”_

She could hear Luffy’s next words mixed with the words inside her own head, and she fought the urge to choke.

“THEY’RE _IMPORTANT_ TO ME!”

 _“SHE WAS_ EVERYTHING _TO ME!”_

Kelly leaned back against the palm tree she’d been hiding behind, and sighed.

“Well, now I feel like a shitty person.”

“It’s not like they’re dead,” Shere Khan said, grooming herself by her Mistress’s feet.

“Well, yeah, I know that and you know that, but the Rubberband Man over there doesn’t. I was laughing at their panic, at their fear, while he thinks his nakama are dead. That doesn’t make me feel like a good person. At all.” She rubbed her face and groaned. “God damn it, why can’t these people still be just characters to me?”

She yawned and sat down, leaning against the tree.

“We’ll have to wait a bit. I’m going to take a nap. I’ll need my energy to do the spell that’ll let me talk with Laboon and I want to do some work on my mindscape. Shere, take watch. Tell me when Laboon surfaces.” She closed her eyes and began to meditate, feeling the magic roll through her body like thunder as she fell deeper into her own subconscious.

* * *

She stood on the floor of a vast ocean that swarmed with countless life. Everything from the smallest goldfish to the mightiest Sea Kings swam here, brushing up against her legs and arms with casual intimacy or swimming carefully by so she could run her fingers over their scales, fur, hair, skin.

She walked along the sandy-gravel floor, her hair unbound and flowing free above and behind her, draped in a translucent dress the color of a pearl. Her scales glimmered in the light that filtered down from the sun thousands of miles above the ocean and her smile was as free as she could never afford to be in real life.

Here, she was not scarred. Here, her scales were just another part of her. Here, she was beautiful. And it was here that she was most at home.

In the distance lay a castle crafted from coral in colors like the rainbow on steroids, from which toe-tapping, soul-thumping amalgamation of music from around the world she’d left behind drifted towards her like a siren’s song.

On the gravel path she took, she could see the blackness and cracked ground from the day she’d…well…

She’d been working like mad to bring this place back to its original glory. She’d spent days on the cruise ship working on the ruined parts of the castle itself, but what little was left there would have to wait.

She stepped from the path, and headed to a large patch of black, smoky ground several yards away. Once she reached it, she sat down, and let the rolling magic spill from her limbs, sinking into the sad, torn ground.

* * *

Laboon’s voice was a song, full of grief and pain and heartache beyond measure. Kelly opened her mouth and sang back, with words that were not words and full of just as much anguish as his.

He spoke of a man with strange markings on his face and dark blond hair with a voice that boomed like a drum. He spoke of another man with a black bush of hair and a melodious voice paired with the music that had soothed him as nothing else ever had. He spoke of a family whom he followed on a ship flying a pirate’s flag high, lured by love and acceptance and the music that had become a part of him as few things ever could. He spoke of a promise he’d remembered for decades and would remember for decades more.

She spoke of a home far, far away from everything she now knew as reality, where her own family lived, a father with spices in his scent, a mother with smiles in her eyes, a sister and brother in all but blood who knew her like no one else ever would, and another girl with her heart in her eyes as she looked at the girl who’d saved her. She spoke of a blond haired woman with love in her eyes and eyes as blue as the sea, who vanished under the claws of a multi-limbed beast. She spoke of her new friends, small and sleek but so much more than that, and of the magic that allowed her to sing to him.

She also spoke of the man still waiting for him, and of the man who would give him the strength to wait even longer. Just wait, just wait, she sang to him. Let him challenge you, let him help you live.

Because while Laboon loved his nakama, it was so _hard_ to keep going after so long.

She rested against the tree, snoozing with one eye cracked, as the Merry Go and Crocus emerged from Laboon’s mouth. And after she’d offered a convincing enough explanation, charmed Nami into forgetting that Kelly had jumped ship, and heard Crocus tell Laboon’s story, she sat back and waited, and smiled as Luffy gave her friend a reason to live.

Tears bubbled from those enormous eyes, and Laboon let out a burbling boom of a sound that made the ears of all the humans on board ache, but to her was something else entirely.

_Thank you, Magus…_

She had to bite her lip harshly to keep the tears from misting her eyes.

But a voice cut through her sentimentality.

“And who are you, then?” She turned, to see Crocus watching her as the crew got ready to leave and Luffy said his final goodbyes.

She smiled, lazily and without a care on the outside, though inwardly she tensed. To underestimate the doctor who’d kept Gol. D. Roger alive through his terminal illness was not something she would ever, ever do.

“A guest,” she offered banally, still smiling. “These lovely folks agreed to drop me off in the Grand Line.”

“I meant your name,” Crocus said, not fooled in the least. She could see the knowledge in his eyes, and it took years of self-restraint to keep from tensing.

“Ciel,” she gave the fake name with nary a twitch of the brow. “Ciel Russo. Why?”

He shrugged. “Just curious. Anyway, have fun.”

The Straw Hats called their goodbyes to Laboon and Crocus both, the old man waving, the whale singing.

Kelly smiled, but all the while a voice in her head whispered a warning: _He knows._

* * *

It had taken them a while, slogging through the rapidly changing weather of the Grand Line – Kelly enjoying every moment of it, despite the backbreaking work involved, the rapidly changing climate stirring some undefinable something in her heart – when they’d entered a clear stretch of ocean. It would probably take them a little while before they reached the next island.

“Whisky Peak,” she whispered under her breath.

“Did you say something?” She smiled at Zoro, who’d come up behind her.

“Oh, that’s the name of the place I think we’re heading,” she offered, not even blinking as she lied her ass off. “I read about it in a couple books I found back on an island I was staying on before I met y’all.”

“Your home?” he asked and Kelly felt her smile falter before she managed to cement it in place.

“No. Just a place I stayed. Why’d you want to know?” She asked, still smiling pleasantly.

“I just want to know why someone would want to travel with a bunch of pirates to head to the most dangerous sea in the world,” Zoro said, resting back against the railing, looking perfectly at ease.

Dangerous, dangerous, _dangerous._ This man just _screamed_ it with every inch of his body, but alongside that was a healthy helping of warmth and loyalty for the straw-hatted boy who was chasing Usopp around in a light-hearted game of tag on the lower deck. She could see the way something in his eyes firmed, even as his whole face seemed to smile and melt at once, without a twitch of his lips.

 _‘Well, well, well…_ ’ Kelly thought, fighting a gleeful smirk. _‘Wasn’t expecting_ that _.’_

But it made her feel a great deal more…sympathetic? Was that the word to use...towards the swordsman who she knew would give his life for his crew and his captain without a thought.

Not so comfortable as to confess who she really was, or anything crazy like that, but enough to give him a real smile, not the fake one she’d been careful to maintain around the rest of the pirates at all times.

“I just want to get home, Roronoa-san. Nothing wrong with that, is there?” She told him.

They stood in silence for several moments – not exactly a comfortable one, but rather a silence like the truce declared between two warring parties. Kelly watched Luffy and Usopp play and felt a lump rise up in her throat at the carefree friendship.

A memory flashed through her mind, so quick and sudden that she almost choked.

_-…The sun was warm, and she was with friends who wouldn’t remark on the flabbiness of her arms, so Kelly stripped to the sting tank-top she wore under her oversized t-shirt, and lay back in the sun, listening to the birds cawing in the trees, the lap of the ocean against the beach, and the good-natured, restrained lust-filled squabbles of her two best friends in the world._

_‘They should just have at it one night and get it over with,’ Kelly thought drowsily, the sun better than any lullaby. ‘Hey, maybe I should get Beth a condom for her birthday.’_

_The thought made her giggle, before she stretched her arms high above her head and yawned, only to blink when two pairs of warm, rough hands clasped around her wrists and ankles._

_“What the fuck?” she bellowed, rearing out of sleepiness like a startled horse, and was lifted into the air._

_“You’re starting to look a little red there, Kel,” Beth’s voice came from above her head, and Kelly assumed she was the one holding her wrists._

_“You should take a little dip to cool off,” Alex’s teasing voice came from her feet as they moved closer to the ocean._

_Kelly’s eyes bulged and she twisted to look at them both and the place they were heading._

_“Oh, hell no, you had better not even try that, you snot-nosed brats!” Kelly barked, twisting frantically, trying to dislodge their grip, and nearly succeeding. Despite Beth and Alex’s toned bodies and considerable musculature, Kelly weighed around 270 and had her own muscles to go along with that._

_But they managed to keep a hold of her, and when they got about ankle-deep in the ocean, began to swing her, even as Kelly swore and swore and swore herself blue in the face, while they teased her._

_“One,” the two assholes sang together. If she hadn’t been so pissed, she would have laughed straight out._

_“Two…three!” With an almighty heave, the two sent her flying out over the water._

_“FUCK YOU BO-!” Was all Kelly managed to get out before she crashed through the surface, choking on salt. Alex and Beth waded out to her, and Kelly got a great deal of satisfaction by pantsing Alex and stealing Beth’s bikini top, leading to identical shrieks of rage from her two friends._

_They’d chased each other all over the shoreline for hours, before collapsing in a heap._

_Later, they’d enjoyed the fireworks display Alex’s stepfather had put on for the neighbors in their upscale beach home, piled over each other in the hammock in the backyard._

_It was the best 4 th of July Kelly had ever had…-_

She sighed and fought back the sick roll in her stomach that she could now easily identify as homesickness.

“Are you all right?” Zoro asked, watching her closely.

She bit her tongue until she knew she could trust her voice.

“Ah, yes, Roronoa-san, I’m fine. Just got lost on memory lane, as it were. I think I see an island,” she sidestepped, successfully diverting the swordsman’s attention, to where a vague shape had appeared in the fog. Zoro went to go join the rest of his crew in the lower deck.

She could see the enormous cacti easily, and as she narrowed her eyes, saw the hundreds of thousands of tombstones that lined each of them. Her mouth twisted bitterly, and she felt two warm bodies twining around her ankles. Automatically she knelt down so Gin could leap onto her shoulders and she could pick up Shere Khan.

“An awful sight, isn’t it?” She asked her friends.

Shere Khan shuddered. “Mama, I feel the death hanging over them,” she whispered, trembling, and Kelly smoothed her fur, comforting the young tigress.

Gin leaned close to Kelly’s ear, using the noise from Mr. 9’s and Miss Wednesday’s departure to speak.

“She’s right, Mistress. Many, many people have met their untimely ends in this place,” he said.

Kelly sighed. “Nothing like death to dampen my instinctive fangirl-y joy. Oh well. Not like I expected anything different, but still. Will I ever see the wonder in these places like I used to?”

“Perhaps when we get to Fishman Island you’ll have a chance,” Gin said. “Now you can’t afford to, because it’s a luxury those on the run _can’t_ afford.”

“You’re such a spoilsport, Gin,” Kelly said with a sigh, as Shere reached up to lick her chin. “Still, it’ll be pretty neat to see Igaram and Vivi-hime. Hey…I wonder how beautiful Vivi-hime is in real life.”

Gin snorted. “Pervert.”

“Don’t group me in with Sanji, baka-Aido,” she remonstrated gently. “I just appreciate beauty is all.”

“Ciel, we’ll be disembarking soon,” Nami called and Kelly nodded.

She leaned against the wall as they sailed towards the mouth of the river. Her ears picked up the sounds of muttering coming from the land around them.

_“Pirates!”_

_“…warn Igarappoi.”_

_“Get ready, get ready…”_

As they emerged out of the fogbank, the crowd _erupted_ , cheering and calling praises and welcomes.

“A little overdone, isn’t it?” Gin commented wryly, making Kelly giggle helplessly.

“Can’t say it isn’t working,” she remarked, looking towards the pirates. Usopp was blowing the crowd kisses and Luffy was laughing from his seat on Merry’s head. Nami and Sanji looked a little poleaxed, and Zoro didn’t have an expression on his face at all.

It occurred to Kelly that Roronoa Zoro was a lot smarter than the anime and manga had shown.

“Shere Khan, Gin, I want you to stay on the ship,” Kelly whispered. “I’d rather not have you get involved in this, and I don’t want those bounty hunters to get a hold of my things. I’ll be back soon.”

“Awww, but Mamaaaaa…” Shere Khan whined, and Kelly raised an eyebrow at her.

“Little miss, you’ll spend this time with Gin learning how to strengthen your mindscape. I don’t want anyone getting into your mind and turning you against me, or something horrible like that. Gin, you’ll help her, right?”

He stood on her shoulders. “Of course, my Mistress. Come, Shere Khan.” He brushed his whiskered cheek against hers before leaping down, the tiger cub grumbling, but obediently following nonetheless.

Nami called to her, and she willingly clambered down and off the ship behind the orange-haired navigator as Igaram welcomed them all.

Kelly looked to the sky and felt herself smile.

Over a hundred bounty hunters.

It should be quite fun.

* * *

 **DATE:** _May, I think_

 **MY LOCATION:** _Dew Drop Inn (It’s actually called that! I thought I’d break something laughing)_

 **PLACE:** _Whisky Peak, Grand Line_

_I found a quiet room to write in while I wait for the Baroque Works to make their move. I told Igaram (bro has some weird-ass hair) that I needed a room to lay down in, get some sleep in. He agreed rather easily, and had a tray sent up with some food and alcohol. Both the food and alcohol were spiked with sleep-drugs, of course._

_Silly human._

_I could tell immediately. I didn’t even need the spells I use on my food all the time, the smell was so damned strong. One of the good things about being a Sea Snake, I suppose._

_I negated the effects and ate my fill. I pretended to be asleep when Igaram or someone checked on me, trying to be quiet and subtle about it, but failing horribly. To my ears they were as loud as a stampede of horses._

_Something tells me those bounty hunters are going to give me few problems at all._

_Heh. Should be fun to teach these uppity humans their place._

_…It’s gone all quiet. I think it’s time for the real party to begin._

_Hehehehehehehehe…_

_~KL_

* * *

She used _Geppo_ to reach the rooftop, her feet lightly striking the air and propelling her up. Even above her much prized _Soru_ , it was Kelly’s favorite technique of Rokushiki.

That wasn't to say she didn’t like _Kami-e_ , _Rankyaku_ , _Shigan_ , and _Rokuogan_ (though she hadn’t mastered the last three yet), because she honestly really, really _did_ , but there was a great deal to be said for being able to fly.

She landed lightly on the roof and watched Zoro watch the Baroque Works people below.

“Come to join the party?” Zoro asked, not looking at her.

She snorted. “Do you mind? I was getting awfully bored waiting for them to try and attack.”

He turned to her then and an evil smirk Kelly knew matched the one growing on her face curved his lips. He nodded and gestured to a spot next to him, and she primly took a seat.

He looked back and called out, almost _teasingly_ , to the agents. “Hey, sorry to interrupt, but do you think you could let them sleep a little while longer? They’re still pretty tired from the voyage.”

The agents whirled, shock on all of their faces, and Kelly threw her head back, cackling.

“Why, I do believe we startled them, Roronoa-san!” she said.

“You should have been completely unconscious,” Igaram yelled, and Zoro stood.

“No swordsman worth their salt allows himself to be overwhelmed with drink, no matter the circumstance,” he said.

Kelly casually poked his leg. “This is a nest of bounty hunters, Roronoa-san, didja know?” She offered cheerfully, almost like a little girl would. “They must lure pirates in and rob ‘em blind. There’s a lot of ‘em here.”

“About a hundred,” Zoro confirmed, still smiling almost unpleasantly, but not before giving her an amused quirk of the lips. “It’s no matter. I’ll still take you on, _Baroque Works._ ”

The renewed shock on all of their faces set Kelly off again. She nearly fell off the roof, she was laughing so hard.

“WILL YOU STOP LAUGHING AT US?!” Igaram bellowed.

Kelly just pointed at him and _roared_. “Hair-curlers,” she wheezed. “ _Hair-curlers_!” It was all she could get out in between the bouts of convulsive giggling.

She heard a snort from Zoro as Igaram turned red with rage.

“ _ANYWAY_ ,” Vivi-hime said loudly, spots of color high in her cheeks. “How do you know that name?” she asked Zoro.

Kelly was summarily ignored. She thought about pretending to pout, but was still too giggly to even try it.

The green-haired man shrugged. “A while ago, you people tried to recruit me. I refused, of course. None of your members know anything about each other and only use codenames. Your Boss’s location and identity are all top secret. A criminal organization that carries out its order to the letter, the bounty hunters feared by pirates across the seas, Baroque Works…Was it supposed to be a secret? I’m so sorry,” Zoro said, his face practically evil in the light of the shining moon.

And it set Kelly off _yet again._

Because the look on Zoro’s face was a goddamn replica of the U MAD BRO icon.

Oh holy God, Roronoa Zoro was a _master troll_. It was the most beautiful thing that had ever happened to her _ever_.

“This is surprising…” Igaram said, ignoring Kelly with heroic effort. “But since you know our identity, we’ll have to eliminate you. There will be two more gravestones for the Cactus Rocks tonight.”

“Ohoho, really now?” Kelly said, still giggling, and she felt Zoro tense, just a little, and got ready to move.

“KILL THEM!” Igaram roared, and Kelly promptly leapt from the roof, stepping straight into _Soru_.

* * *

Kelly launched herself forward, smashing into the man who had a gun pointed down at Zoro. A quick spearhand to the throat, and he dropped to the ground next to the swordsman, giving him a start.

“You should pay more attention to your surroundings, boy-o, and stop mooning over your swords,” Kelly chastised.

“Feh,” Zoro sniffed at her before a group of gunmen came out of nowhere and he drew Yubashiri.

Kelly watched as he shot forward, the blade moving like a dream across the backs, bellies, legs, and arms of the bounty hunters. Zoro was a damn good swordsman.

Not great, no. Not yet.

But the potential was _there_ , hiding deep under his skin, in the iron-strength of his spine, in the large, capable hands that wielded his swords like an extension of his own body. He had a soul-deep connection to the blades in his hands, one that would be forged even deeper and stronger as the years passed.

This was a swordsman that could forge a connection with whatever blade entered his hands.

It would be his mastering of that ability that would eventually lead to him becoming the strongest swordsman in the world.

Kelly knew, with utter and striking clarity, that it would be that ability that would lead to him to finally defeating Dracule Mihawk.

Three men armed with butcher knives charged at her. Without much thought, she disarmed one, stole his cleaver, and used it to slit the throats of the others. They dropped, gagging and choking, drowning in their own blood, and she trotted after Zoro, eyes alight with glee.

* * *

She didn’t know if she’d be able to down someone like Miss Monday, who was built like a freaking tank, but much to Kelly’s surprise, when her foot connected with the side of the big woman’s head, she went flying into the wall.

Kelly landed in a crouch beside Zoro, who nodded.

“Not bad,” he said, eyeing the crater the agent had made in the wall when she crashed into it.

“You think?” she asked, rubbing her chin and looking at the dazed agent critically. “I think I misjudged it. Should have nailed her closer to the crux of the neck and shoulder, knocked her out.”

“There’s always a time for second chances,” Zoro said, rather philosophically, and Kelly gave him a strange look.

“Problem?” he asked, seeing her stare, and she shook her head.

“…It’s nothing,” she said with a slightly strained smile. He was different than the manga. It was odd. Really odd.

It was so awesome to see him in action, but Kelly had to remember that this Roronoa Zoro standing beside her was not a character, he was a _person_ , with the resultant depths and varying shades of gray that it was nearly impossible for a cartoon character to have, no matter how much of a genius Oda was.

She shook herself as Miss Monday staggered out of the crater, bleeding from the mouth.

The dark-skinned woman pulled some brass knuckles onto her hands, and something in Kelly’s head _roared_ , snarling and eager for blood. She had to remind herself that she didn’t want to kill Miss Monday, because she and Mr. 9 were going to have the cutest child ever, but it was hard as _fuck._

Kelly tried really hard not to remember that she hadn’t stayed herself from killing humans in a very, very long time. It was easier than knocking them out, after all. And it made damn sure they wouldn’t be back on their feet in an hour and trying again to kill her, rape her, or bleed her.

It was still a sting.

She stepped into Miss Monday’s guard, and nailed the woman directly under the chin. It was a knockout blow, and Kelly couldn't help but think that _it would be so easy to slam my claws into her neck, rip and tear and be splattered with **blood**_ before she managed to back away.

As Zoro quickly knocked out a bunch of bounty hunters that had tried to sneak up behind her, and the two of them walked to the edge of the roof to look down at the only three agents of Baroque Works still on their feet, Kelly felt a coldness enter her blood.

There was something very wrong with her, and it wasn’t just the magic, scales, and venom.

She had looked at Miss Monday like the woman _was prey._

A man called out from below, holding his bleeding arm, “That guy defeated Miss Monday in a test of strength!”

They looked at her with fear and no little shock, and despite everything, it made a part of Kelly feel sickly, darkly pleased.

That…

That was very _not good_.


	5. initium valebat (The Start of Adventure)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kelly protects the lovely Princess Vivi from the Baroque Works agents. Elsewhere, two rather odd people have a rather odd conversation.

Igaram, Vivi, and Mr. 9 watched the both of them with wary eyes.

“I understand now…” Igaram said. “The Marines must have made a mistake on the wanted poster.”

Mr. 9 seemed to agree. “It make more sense if he was the one worth 30,000,000 beri. He must be the real Captain.”

“And that ponytailed man who defeated Miss Monday must be his co-captain,” Vivi said. “I thought it was odd that a smiley-faced brat would be worth so much. Those two are obviously stronger.”

 _Well, all right then_ , Kelly thought.

“Still, it’s a disgrace,” Igaram said coldly. “To have so many of us defeated by a single pirate swordsman and an effeminate man like him? The boss has entrusted us with this town. We’ll be held responsible for this.”

“Dude, you got a lot of balls telling me I look fucking effeminate, when you look like you’ve got fucking _hair curlers_ on,” Kelly said, feeling tendrils of anger in her belly.

What really got to her was the way Igaram had said the word _effeminate_. With a tinge of disgust and annoyance. As though he was saying, how dare this man with girly features be able to do the things he’d done.

And that, more than anything, more than the fact that it could, oh, _blow her cover_ , pissed Kelly Lewis straight the fuck off.

Kelly remembered years of people telling her she wasn’t a proper girl, a proper woman, and she remembered trying and trying and trying until she couldn’t breathe anymore as she tried to become everything that society wanted a woman to be, no matter how wrong it fucking felt, and still got their shame and hate and awful, gritty catcalls and obscenities.

She remembered how nice it felt with Alex and Beth, and for a while Henry and Lien, where she could wear bikinis or tuxedos or whatever the fuck she wanted and act however the fuck she wanted without any shame. She could wrestle with Alex and talk with him about girls without it getting weird, and Beth could curl her hair and do her makeup lightly and they could talk about boys and that didn’t feel wrong or weird either.

Kelly remembered all of this in the space of about two seconds, and the homesickness nearly took her down at the knees. She knew her parents, and her friends would be startled by her scaly bits, but they would accept her. They would accept her, _all of her_ , the way they accepted that she was – on the inside – a man as much as she was a woman. And they would tell her that there was nothing wrong with her scaly bits, just like they’d done when she’d told them she wished she was a man, too.

She wished she was home. She wished she was _home_ , where she didn’t have to be a she or a he, but…

Just Kelly.

Oh, what did it even _matter_? Humans would always be stupid about what other humans were when they didn’t follow the “norm”, which she certainly never did. And considering the fact that she had _scales_ , a little something like gender was the last thing she should be worrying about. “She” worked just well for Kelly, and wishing for more than that was just selfish.

She blinked, coming back to herself just as Igaram began to blow on his saxophone-gun.

…Her mind hadn’t wandered off like that in years.

She gently leapt out of the way, landing on the ground, and promptly ducked down an alley. If she remembered the storyline correctly, Mr. 5 and Miss Valentine would be here soon.

Where had Zoro gone off to?

* * *

He was facing off with Vivi-hime and Mr. 9, the former of which had a short sword pointed at a sleeping Luffy’s distended belly.

It was really odd that it was the sight of Luffy’s inhumanly stretched stomach that was, without question, the strangest thing Kelly had ever seen in many years.

Kelly walked behind Igaram, and before he could start shooting, knocked him off the roof with a blow to the back that would guarantee that he wouldn’t be a problem, but would allow him to fight against Mr. 5 and Miss Valentine’s Day.

She smirked when she saw him crash into Mr. 9, Carue, and Vivi-hime, bowling the unprepared agents over.

“Well, that was pathetic,” she told Zoro, who smirked. “Wanna go get drunk? The wine’s pretty nice and the night is a fine one for drinking.”

It was physically impossible for Roronoa Zoro to turn down alcohol, so his agreement came easily.

They clambered up the side of the building, both of them letting out pleased noises when they found several bottles of unbroken wine, and sat in a companionable silence until the Baroque Works officer agents arrived. They were probably the least weird looking out of all the Baroque Works agents, barring Miss Goldenweek, in Kelly’s honest opinion.

“Captain of Arabasta’s Royal Guard, Igaram, and Crown Princess Nefertari Vivi…by orders of the Boss, you are to be eliminated,” Mr. 5 said.

“You know,” Kelly said to Zoro, who watching the tableau with some interest as Vivi took off with the agents close behind, “Your captain’s still down there. You should probably go get him.”

“I probably should, shouldn’t I?”

Kelly sniggered, and thought with some regret that it was a damned shame Roronoa Zoro was a human. He would have been a great friend.

They drank for a while before Kelly stood. “Well, I’m going to go flirt with the Princess. You all good here?” She asked, and got a nod from the swordsman.

“Have fun with that. I’m going to get Luffy and the others,” Zoro said with a lazy yawn.

Swinging a bottle of wine, Kelly sauntered off in the direction Vivi had run.

* * *

She waited in a dark alley and let out a sharp whistle just as Vivi and Carue raced past. The duck came to a halt and both duck and blunette looked wildly around.

“‘ey, Vivi-hime, I’d suggest you come over here before the Baroque Works agents get here,” Kelly said, stepping from the shadows and waving nonchalantly.

She stopped, eying Kelly suspiciously. “Why should I, pirate?”

Kelly just sighed. “One, I ain’t a pirate, just a long-term guest. Two, the pirates’ navigator is just now negotiating with your boy Igaram to get you back home to Alabasta safe. Three, all _I_ want to do is flirt with you. I’m fair certain that’s not what _Baroque Works_ wants.”

There were a couple of seconds of silence, before Vivi and the duck quickly hurried over to her and hid in the shadows. Kelly helped the blue haired girl off Carue’s back, and they both sat against the wall. Kelly noted with interest that Vivi was even more beautiful than the anime and manga version. Her light blue hair fell in waves around her face and her eyes were a simply delicious dark brown that reminded the Magus of melted semi-sweet bars of chocolate. Her dark skin gleamed in the faded light.

Even with the dirt and blood smudging her face, she had a bearing about her shoulders Kelly assumed was the inborn aura of nobility it was said that royalty carried around them.

And unlike most nobility and those of royal blood, she didn’t wear it arrogantly or pretend at it. She wore it easily, like most people wore clothes.

It was… _interesting_. Did her father have the same presence as his daughter?

No wonder the Baroque Works had discovered Vivi’s and Igaram’s identities so quickly. That presence and that extraordinary blue hair…

Kelly pulled a small handkerchief from her pocket and, cupping Vivi’s face in her hand, began doggedly but gently wiping away as much of the grime and blood as she could. The princess immediately started squirming.

“H-hey, what’re you doing?!” She demanded, trying to knock Kelly’s hands away. Kelly simply ignored her protests until she had gotten off as much as she could, and then tossed the cloth away, and sat back, tilting the princess’s face left and right, watching it carefully.

Then she smiled and nodded. “Much better. A princess as pretty as you shouldn’t be covered by blood and dirt, Nefertari Vivi-hime of Arabasta.”

Kelly could feel the fear trembling in the blue-haired woman’s body, could practically _taste_ it. But it wasn’t for herself, but rather for the man she’d been forced to leave behind at the mercy of the Baroque Works.

“Vivi, it’s all right,” Kelly said, tilting the girl’s face so that she could look directly into her eyes. “It will be all right, I promise you.”

 _‘This is strange,’_ Kelly thought to herself. It had been a very long time since she’d given comfort to another human. But Vivi’s eyes were warm and they’d lost some of that fear that had darkened them.

And when a smile quirked Vivi’s full lips up, Kelly remembered with sudden, striking clarity-

_-…The sun is warm and the air carries the fresh hints of a summer in full swing, the music from the distant festival traveling even as far as the park. Her fingers tangle knots in the floor length skirt she wears, as she looks at Beth and Alex._

_It is the first time Beth has been out in public since she’d gotten home from the hospital._

_“C-Can I sit here?” Kelly asks, her voice stilted and overly formal, as the dark-skinned woman and Cajun-Russian man watching her with hooded eyes._

_She wonders if her guilt is etched on every stitch of flesh she has, her guilt at not being able to save her friend from a fate worse than death, and she can't quite still the trembling in her fingertips._

_Then a warm, dusky hand takes hers and pulled her down to the red-and-white checkered blanket at Beth’s side, and Kelly feels her heart leap into her throat._

_Beth’s dark brown eyes are bright with unshed tears, and her hand is tight around Kelly’s._

_“Of course you can,” she says quietly, and it is only pride that keeps Kelly from breaking down in public, from crying until she can no longer breathe, because finally the crushing guilt is beginning to crack and finally, finally she has her only friends in the world back with her._

_“Th-Thank you…” she gets out instead, and rests her head on Beth’s shoulder, feeling Alex’s arms wrap around them both._

_And when Beth smiles, it is like the rising of the sun…-_

_‘Well, hell,’_ Kelly thought, restraining the urge to sigh or break something. ‘ _I’m such a sentimental fool.’_

Then she froze, hearing the lightest tap on the roof of the building they sat against, and lunged forward, hauling Vivi into her arms. She kicked off the air and dove out of the alley, Carue close behind, just as Miss Valentine crashed into the ground where they’d been sitting with her Kilo Press.

Kelly skidded to a halt, Vivi clinging tightly to her neck and straightened as Mr. 5 appeared before her.

He looked thoroughly annoyed. “Enough of this nonsense,” he said, and began…

…

…picking his nose.

…

…

… _what_.

Kelly raised an eyebrow as she sat Vivi on her feet again by her duck.

“I’m not one to judge another man’s activities,” Kelly drawled, putting a hand on her hip, “But don’t you think that’s not something you should be doing, much less in public? Have some _shame_ , man.”

He sneered at her as he pulled his finger from his nose and began rolling whatever he’d found between his thumb and forefinger. “Oh, I’m going to enjoy this.”

It felt like she was forgetting something. She knew this guy had Devil Fruit Powers, but which ones? Hm…

“Nose Fancy Cannon!” The agent yelled and flicked the boogers at her, just as Vivi grabbed her hand.

There was the instinctual jerk of surprise and rage ( _how dare she touch me!_ ) but it vanished when Vivi said, “Mr. Kenpo, he’s a bombman! He can make any part of himself explode!”

…Oh, so that’s what he did.

She turned back to see the speck of (highly explosive) boogers hurtling at them and restrained the urge to facepalm. _Now_ she remembered.

This was going to _hurt_ -

Suddenly there was a green blur in front of them, and the air and ground exploded on either side of them for several yards back, the tortured ground screaming under the assault.

“Mr. Bushido!” Vivi cried out.

Kelly looked on either side and felt both eyebrows raise in involuntary appreciation. “Holy frijoles, that’s some powerful boogers,” she said with a snort of laughter.

“I had to cut _snot_!” Zoro whined, and Kelly cackled.

“Aw, poor thing. Is your sword soiled forevermore?” She mocked.

The swordsman glared at her. “Oh shut up, girly-man.”

A vein pulsed in her cheek. “Ex _cuse_ me?”

He just smirked. “You heard me, bastard.”

“Why are you so persistent?” Vivi snapped, interrupting the argument. She pulled out one of her Peacock Slashers out and started twirling it. Kelly quickly put a hand out to stop her.

“Vivi-hime, stop. He’s here to help you…right? You _are_ here to save her, right?” Kelly asked the green-haired swordsman, who nodded.

“Aren’t you the swordsman who took down all of those bounty hunters in town?” Miss Valentine asked. “Why would you suddenly start protecting the Arabastan princess?”

Zoro shrugged. “I have my reasons.”

“No matter,” Mr. 5 said, picking his nose _yet again_. “You’re standing in our way, so that means you’re an obstacle. Our enemy.”

“I FOUND YOU!!!!”

Kelly felt her smile stretch to Joker-esque proportions as they all turned to see a horribly bloated Luffy a short distance away, face red and nose puffing like an angered bull.

She turned back to Vivi and grinned. “Come on love, let’s get you out of the danger zone, shall we?” She began herding the Princess back as Luffy charged.

“They’re, _they’re insane_!” Vivi said, her face a combination of outright shock and adorable confusion as the two pirates promptly began beating the ever loving shit out of each other.

“Yeah, probably, but they’re your best hope of getting back to Arabasta in one piece,” Kelly said, sitting on some crates stacked against a building a short while away from the brawl. She yawned.

“Hey, Vivi-hime, tell me about your homeland.” It took a bit of doing, but soon Kelly had drawn the girl’s attention away from the fight, peppering her with questions until she smiled again and began to answer, as they waited for Nami to arrive and put a stop to the brawl.

* * *

 **DATE:** _Later that day… May 30 th_

 **MY LOCATION:** _My room_

 **PLACE:** _Merry Go_

_It’s been a while since my last entry. Everything went as it should have at Whisky Peak. Nami interrupted the battle between Zoro and Luffy, who thought that Zoro had gotten pissed off at the bounty hunters because they didn’t have his favorite food._

_(Dear Lord, but that boy’s a fucking dumbass. At least that’s one thing the anime and manga got perfectly right.)_

_Nami tried to get a billion beri out of Vivi in return for taking her to Arabasta, but of course Vivi turned her down._

_“Eh? But you’re a princess, aren’t you? It’s just a measly billion,” Nami said._

_“Ah, Nami-chan, Arabasta’s about to erupt into a civil war, they **can’t** afford it,” I said and got everyone’s attention, including Vivi’s._

_“How do you know that?” Vivi asked. After all, it hadn’t been one of the things we’d talked about._

_Perhaps I should feel bad about how easily the lie came to my lips, but I didn’t feel anything at all as I answered the question and sidestepped, putting the attention back on Vivi._

_“Hey, I read about it back in Loguetown, about how the rebel army’s growing stronger day by day. It wasn’t hard to put the dots together. And besides, why else would a princess be working with a group of bounty hunters? I take it that Baroque Works has something or else to do with the troubles your country is having, am I right?”_

_Vivi sighed. “You’re correct.” She went on to explain about her country and the troubles it had been experiencing, coupled with Baroque Works involvement, until she accidentally revealed the BW’s Boss’s identity. The otter and the vulture – the Unluckies, I think they were called – heard, Nami flipped out, and then the animals drew pictures of Nami, Luffy, and Zoro._

_I was sitting in the shadows of a building, out of sight, and they didn’t manage to get a close look at me. Which is good._

_Everything else went as it should. Igaram looked fucking weird as hell in his disguise, got blown up by Miss All-Sunday (ROBIN! KYAAAA), and then we ran like hell back for the ship, Luffy dragging a thoroughly confused Sanji and Usopp all the way back._

_I went and hid in my room, submitted to a scolding from Gin (who of course was worried out of his wits), snuggled with Shere Khan, and finally sat back to write this entry. I don’t really want Miss All-Sunday to see me, no matter how cool she is (or how awesome the fact is that it’s NICO MOTHERFUCKING ROBIN). If anyone would know of the legends of the Magi, or be able to see that I’m not human and not even male, it would be her._

_And besides, Miss All-Sunday isn’t Nico Robin, not really. She hasn’t yet become the stoic archaeologist/historian of the Straw Hats, the dark, enigmatic, but treasured nakama of these pirates. She hasn’t yet become the woman they would fight the world for._

_I don’t want Miss All-Sunday to see me, because Miss All-Sunday is the type of woman who would sell me into slavery (or to the World Government) in a heartbeat. If I had my way, I would hide on this ship until the Arabasta was just a memory of the past, and I wouldn’t have to be anywhere near the dogs of the WG, but I…_

_I don’t want them to think ill of me. I want them to continue to think of me as just a flirtatious, powerful guy always ready with an easy smile and a helping hand. I don’t want them to see how fucked up I really am, how much blood I have on my hands, and how little I really give a shit about Arabasta’s civil war._

_Because I don’t, not really._

_I don’t see any of them as real, to be perfectly honest. And that’s a little terrifying to think about. I have to keep constantly reminding myself that these are people, with thoughts and hopes and dreams and they’re not just fucking characters in a cartoon anymore. If they die or get hurt, it’s not going to go away in a couple minutes of brightly colored pixels or a flick of the page._

_Why is it that the only things that seem real to me are my cats, my magic and the Daemons? Not even my scales, my martial arts seem real._

_It’s so damned disconcerting. Gods, I can’t wait to get back home, to be in a place where everything makes some notion of fucking sense, and where the people are actually people to me._

_I feel like I’m going insane, like my feet are floating several inches off the ground and no matter what I do I can’t make them go back down._

 

_I want to feel real again. That’s all I want. And I can’t do that here._

_I’m not going to be able to stay with these guys for very long. Before Skypiea, **definitely** before Enies Lobby, I’ll have to leave. Maybe I’ll stick around for Arabasta. I can see about getting a ship away there. If I help her country, Vivi will help me get a ship, or at least help get me **on** a ship. I’ll need to make sure she becomes my ‘friend’ and trusts me, if that’s going to happen._

_I can do that easily._

_After all, it’s not like I’m not halfway to seducing her already, as things stand._

_~KL_

* * *

**Meanwhile, in the New World…**

The island hummed as its residents came alive for a brand new day, the sun crimson red on the horizon, the waters surrounding the island a gorgeous, crystalline blue. Sea Kings swam in idle circles in the deeper pockets of water near land, while schools of fish and other aquatic life darted in and out of the dark pink coral reefs that formed a hidden barrier around the island.

In the middle of the island lay a large, expansive tropical jungle, erupting with life, surrounded by a circle of pristine white beach. The jungle thrummed with noise, mostly the sounds of the wild fauna that called it home, but the closer one got to the middle of the jungle, one could hear new sounds start to join the animals.

Humans. Voices. Shouting, yelling, crying, singing, laughing, praying.

An immense tree lay in the center of the jungle, spanning several hundred meters in height and still more in diameter. In its branches lay a village, with walkways and bridges leaping from house to house, from shop to shop, from building to building, climbing higher and higher into the tree. Men and women and children of all ages, sizes, and races, wandered about the sturdy wooden walkways, starting their day with yawns and yells, with laughs and smiles, just as any village anywhere in the world did.

But the people here were a bit…mm, a bit _different_ than most humans were.

A light-skinned man dressed in an oversized blue tanktop and baggy grey sweats emerged from one of the huts with a yawn, stretching his long arms high above his head.

“Gods, it’s too fucking early for this _shit_ ,” the dark eyed man said, combing back his riotous mane of dark hair into a low ponytail.

A satchel flew from the open doorway to whack him in the back of his head.

“Stop bitching and get to stepping, you dumbass,” a woman’s voice said from within the hut, husky from sleep. “I don’t have to be up for another hour, and I don’t want to waste it listen to you bitch about having to deal with your sugar mama.”

“May the Gods preserve me, you naggy old hag, the Lord’s not my damn-” He leapt out of the way as a brick crashed through the air where he’d just been standing, and swore. “All right, I’m fucking leaving!”

He took off down one of the walkways, swearing all the way.

As he passed by shops, buildings, and the other villagers, he was greeted with the hawking cries of the shopkeepers, teasing smiles and suggestions that turned his ears the color of a tomato, and calls from his friends and acquaintances that he returned with a nonchalant wave.

On the outside of his arms, extending upwards until they vanished under the fabric of his shirt, were burnished red scales, gleaming like chips of ruby in the sun’s morning blaze of light. Many of the people here had scales much like him, in every color of the rainbow, along with a host of other oddities that one didn’t often see on a human’s body, things like horns and wings and fur and everything in between.

“Hey, _wassup_?”

As his back was to the owner of the voice, the man permitted himself a tiny sigh before he turned to the woman sitting on the railing.

She was easily six feet tall, sinuous and layered with ropey muscles, her skin darkly tanned from hours spent flying under the sun, her bald dome of a head gleaming in the morning light. All she wore were her breast binders and a pair of off-white pants embroidered with daisies.

“Hello Saffron,” he said, a tinge of long-suffering annoyance and quiet amusement in his voice.

“Kekekekeke…going to go see yo’ girlfrienddddd, Ormr?” the woman asked, dark blue eyes glittering with amusement.

“Kiss my ass, Saffron,” the blond haired man growled. “She ain’t my damn _girlfriend_ , and talking like that about our Lord is a fucking insult-”

Saffron giggled and held up her hands in a gesture of surrender. “Kidding, kidding! Don’t take my head off, Ormr, you know I don’t mean it.”

He growled. “You know I don’t fucking like the way people talk about us.”

She stood from her crouch, her enormous, silver bat-wings folding back so she could step onto the walkway by his side.

“Considerin’ who she is and considerin’ who _you_ are, I would say that’s inevitable, innit?” Saffron said with a shrug, wrapping a companionable arm around his shoulders.

He sighed. “It’s still irritating.”

“Yeah, well, the price of celebrity ‘nd all…” Saffron yawned. “Nah, but for real, did the Lord call you there for a reason you feel like sharing?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. But she’s watching over some kids she brought from another world, and she’s pretty nervous about it and all.”

“Wants you for moral support?”

He shrugged again. “I’d assume…I’m pretty sure they’re of her blood, though.”

Saffron blinked. “…What, _seriously_? No wonder she’s nervous then, if the kids came from her.”

“That’s not all… Saffron, one of them is a _sanguinem quatuor_.”

The winged woman stopped dead. He sighed, and leaned against the rope railing.

“… _Holy shit,”_ she finally managed to say. “Gods, are you _joking_?!”

He shook his head. “No, I’m not. You know where our Lord came from, and who her previous consort was. And the ones before that.”

“ _Goddamn_ , no wonder she’s nervous about this. If she missteps, it could mean igniting a war between the Gods,” Saffron said softly, running a hand over her bald dome. “She finally did it. Holy shit, she finally created a _four-blood_? That poor kid will be hunted across the goddamned world, by the Gods. …I’ll keep quiet about this, Ormr. Tell the Lord I wish her the luck of the devil. She’ll need it for something like this…”

He nodded and she quickly pecked him on the cheek. “Best of luck to you, too, darlin’,” she said, her wings spreading open.

“Thank you, Saffron.”

As the woman took off, Ormr continued on his way to the house perched in the very top of the tree.

* * *

_Voices sang in hundreds of languages, as They felt the very fabric of time and space curl and twist under Their fingers, as They plucked the strings of reality as one might a harp, sending ripples across Their mind like a stone dropped in a still pond, as seven faces appeared before Their vision, and Their heart ached with love._

_They had seen many fail, and had Themselves failed so many others, but They could not, would not fail these._

_“Good luck, my little ones,” They said._

The first, sitting in a small room on a pirate’s ship.

The second, sitting in a tower high in the sky, praying for help.

The third, running from monsters towards a castle far in the distance.

The fourth, dragged before a white-robed council and condemned to a life of slavery.

The fifth, curled in the immense limbs of a tree that spewed a thickly green gas.

The sixth, trapped in the dungeon of a castle deep in a sea that could be tamed by no man.

The seventh, chained to the side of a man dressed in pink feathers and a cold smile.

_The children now rested firmly in the hands of Fate itself. And Fate, as They well knew, was a cruel mistress indeed._


	6. A Balloon in a Perfectly Windy Sky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bad memories, merciless teasing, and the arrival at Little Garden.

_-…Her world is pain. Pure, unrelenting, agony. There is a disgustingly wet sound each time the whip lands, cracking against the ground-meat flesh of her back and making the rest of her involuntarily convulse. Tiny shudders continuously wrack her limbs, and there’s blood everywhere._

_Hands reach from the crowd, groping, desperate to reach the blood pooling on the wooden planks below her knees. Voices are frenzied, loud, petulant, moaning a terrifying and sickening mantra to the men and women who carefully, methodically, ceremoniously, bring each whip down on her shoulders, set it aside, and pick up another._

_“Feed us, feed us, feed us, feed us,” they cry._

_Animalistic roars of rage and heartbreak come from a cage at the peripheral of her vision._

_The world and all its colors are starting to turn a dismal gray, like the ending of some TV show, but’s not really a TV show that’s ending, it’s her own damned life, and oh God, she’s going to die. She’s going to die, and these bastards will kill Gin and Shere._

_She doesn’t want to die, not after she’s fought so hard and for so long to live. She wants to go home, to her family. But she’s not going to get that chance, because she is dying._

_As her vision narrows, there’s a scream._

_Her head struggles to rise as panic jolts new life through her veins._

_A woman stands just beyond the crowd, chest heaving, face slicked with sweat. She’s beautiful, even with the fear darkening her sapphire-blue eyes, and the heat of the sun frizzing her waist-length blonde hair._

_“Stop this!” she cries when she catches her breath. There are tears filming her eyes._

_Oh God, what is she_ doing _? The panic is raw-red and clawing its way out of her belly through her bloody throat._

_“This isn’t right! She doesn’t deserve to die just so we can have a prosperous harvest. She’s done so much for all of us. We don’t need quarts of blood when one drop of it keeps our fields healthy for years! We don’t need to drain her dry when she willingly uses her magic to keep pirates, bandits, sickness, and wild animals away from us! She’s saved so many of us, and this is how we repay her?!”_

_There is silence._

_“Please, Daddy…I love her,” the woman whispers._

_There is more silence, several thrumming, tension-filled seconds that feel like hours. Then the manbehind her sighs and says three words that send an ice-cold spike of fear through her spine._

_“She is **forsaken**.”_

_Terror blanches the blonde-haired woman’s face to a sickly snow-white. The crowd turns, eyes alight with a deep, awful hunger._

_Somehow, her tortured throat finds the air to scream._

_“MINA!”_

_And the crowd leaps forwards as one as the blonde turns to flee…-_

* * *

Consciousness came swiftly, like a baseball bat smashed into her sternum, and was just as unwelcome. She shot upright, chest heaving, back aching with the vestiges of the nightmare and remembered pain.

There was a burning in her chest, and ache in the space behind her jaw, and horrible stinging in her eyes. She fucking _hurt_. She hurt _all over_.

The pain forced a tiny sob from her throat, and she felt arms curl around her waist, pulling her flush against a lean, pale body, even as a warm body curled around her back.

“Oh, _Mistress_ …” Gin whispered, his human hands stroking through her unbound hair.

“We have you, Mama,” the furry body spooning her aching back whispered, Shere Khan’s voice light and sleepy, but soft with love.

Kelly, overcome with grief and pain, buried her face in Gin’s neck and wept silently.

They made a strange picture, the three of them tangled together on a bed that barely fit one adult and two cats, the black haired and silver-eyed man, the sweat-soaked woman crying into his shoulder like a baby, and the full-grown tiger resting against her back.

Through the porthole on the far wall, the moon shone like it was burning.

* * *

**DATE:**

**MY LOCATION:**

**PLACE:**

_Mina, Mina, Mina, Mina, Mina, Mina, Mina._

_I miss you so much._

_I love you._

(At the bottom of the page, there is an intricate ink drawing of a young woman reclining on a bed, smiling at the viewer, her curvaceous body covered only by a light sheet. She is looking at the viewer with lustrous, hooded eyes, her light hair spilling over her naked shoulders.

The drawing is spotted and smudged with tears.)

* * *

The sky was a perfect robin’s egg blue, with nary a cloud to be seen for miles. The sun’s blazing warmth was cut by the wonderful, sea-salted breeze that was a gift from the ocean. The ocean itself was a pristine sheet of unbroken sapphire for miles. It was a goddamn gorgeous day.

Kelly yawned, resting back against the ropes attaching to the white railing. She was sitting on the upper deck (or whatever it was called. Ship vernacular still eluded her grasp like a particularly ornery greased pig), watching as Vivi explained the nature of the ocean surrounding Reverse Mountain to Luffy and Zoro.

“This is the most difficult sea in all of the world to navigate,” Vivi said solemnly. “We must be on our guard at all times.”

“Hey, dumbasses! Come have a round of my Special Drink!” Sanji called out. Luffy leapt to the lower deck with a shriek of delight, Zoro close on his heels.

Vivi watched them with a scowl knotting a line between her eyebrows, getting progressively more and more annoyed as the boys chattered about fishing lines, then started cheering Carue on as he slurped down several glasses of the blue-green drink.

The door behind Vivi opened, and Nami stepped out, carrying two gracefully designed glasses of the beverage. It was obvious that these two glasses Sanji prepared especially for the women, because Kelly had never before seen such a high level of design go into two drinks.

“How can they be so calm?!” Vivi blurted, smacking a hand against the railing as she looked down at the laughing boys.

“Just let them be. If a storm comes, they know what to do,” Nami said with a smile, holding a glass out to the blue-haired woman. “They don’t want to die, either.”

“I suppose…” Vivi sighed. “But it doesn’t look like they’re even trying to be alert…”

Kelly looked down at the boys as they cackled over Carue, flailing on his back with a very obvious brain-freeze headache. ‘ _Dumbass bird_ ,’ Kelly thought with affection.

Carue had taken to Kelly very quickly and it was a mutual sort of thing, which had surprised pretty much everyone on the ship. Kelly really didn’t see what was so confusing about it. She liked animals. Hadn’t that been made unequivocally clear by the way she doted on Shere Khan and Gin?

But then again, these were the morons who had no earthly clue she was a woman, so perhaps it wasn’t that surprising they couldn’t see it.

(-… _And after all, they didn’t know that it was the monkeys that came to her aid when she was trapped in a castle where the residents moaned with hunger as her blood dripped to the floor, their faces twisting in ways no human’s ever could, or that it was the sparrows that brought her the slavers’ keys as she sat shaking in a cage two times too small, or that it was the whale sharks that bore her tired, aching body to the next island while monsters stalked her every movement, or that it was the tigers who became the only thing close to a family she had in this fucked up world. It was the animals who lived for her, protected her,_ died _for her, and she loved them as much as they loved her…-_ )

Kelly looked at Vivi and Nami and realized that Sanji hadn’t given one of the drinks to her. She looked down and realized the tray was empty beside him.

Then the blond man looked up at her and fucking _smirked_ , that little _shit_ , and the amusement, arousal, and grief _-…Mina’s little smile was touched at the edges with mischievous glee and mockery, as Kelly flailed and swore and tried to find an article of clothing that hadn’t been turned all pink and frilly…-_ that tore through her was like a firestorm, searing through her veins before she could stamp it down and out.

 _‘That little fucker,’_ Kelly thought, fighting the urge to growl. She had been feeling thirsty for a while, and had taken it for granted that she too would get a glass of that delicious looking beverage.

 _‘Is that the sort of game you wanna play, boy-o? Oh, bring it the fuck on.’_ If anyone could see the way Kelly was smiling in her own head, it would have sent them running screaming in the opposite direction, perhaps to the nearest psychiatrist or mental health expert. There was a predatory sort of anticipation in her veins, one that both surprised her and didn’t, all at the same time. To certain challenges, this had always been her default state.

Everything from poker to how to prepare pancakes (courtesy of Dad) to fighting for her life and learning how to skim across the waves with the magic rumbling in her veins, Kelly took to with a single-minded intensity that was just about the most contradictory thing in her entire personality. Things she could truly find a passion for, things she liked, people she liked, she fought for _ferociously_.

Usually, when someone threw down the gauntlet in front of her, it was child’s play to ignore it or to redirect it somewhere else. She felt easiest with a smile and laugh, leaning back and letting the wind run through her hair, listening to the world pass her by and enjoying it as much as she possibly could.

But sometimes she couldn’t. Sometimes things wouldn’t let her be content. Sometimes things just _got to her_.

And that little smirk of Sanji’s got to her in ways she didn’t want to touch with a ten-foot-pole.

She caught sight of Vivi taking a long drink from her glass and a thoroughly awful idea spawned in her head like a rabid zombie plot bunny. She nearly crowed with laughter.

“Hey, cook-san, didn’t you bring me one of your drinks?” She called to the blond man, managing to interject a note of a pout in her voice. She saw Nami raise an eyebrow at the side of her vision – perhaps she should have been worried how well that girl knew her, but she could do that later. “You’re such a meanie,” she all but whined, and blond man smirked at her again.

“You want some cheese with that whine, shithead?” he asked, standing up from his crouch in one slow, smooth movement that made something inside her shiver and tighten with anticipation all at once.

“Tsk, so _mean_ …oh well. I do want to try it, though, it looks delicious. But if you’re going to hoard it I guess I’ll have to find another way.” She stuck her tongue in her cheek. “Oh, Vivi-chan!” She said turning to the princess just as she took another drink. She stepped in close, plucking the empty glass from her fingers and sitting it on the railing.

As she cupped the princess’s neck in her hand and leaned in, she saw Nami’s eyes go huge with shock, and she kissed Vivi on the lips.

Kelly knew how to kiss and she knew how to kiss very well. Back home, she’d been the sort of girl who researched the subject, practiced as often as she could with whomever she could convince to do it, wash, rinse, repeat. She still had no honest clue why on earth she did, as she had never been too fond of people in general, but it was a fairly useful skill, to be able to kiss someone into wide-eyed, trembly-legged silence.

Mina had stared at her for at least five minutes, eyes blown huge with shock and arousal after they’d parted from their first kiss, just like Vivi was doing right now, and it was a testament to Kelly’s herculean self-control that she didn’t let a single emotion but quiet amusement show on her face.

A sound that vaguely resembled a teapot boiling over erupted from behind her, and Kelly felt that little demon inside her mind cackle like a fucking lunatic as she turned, placing a firm hand on the small of Vivi’s back to keep her from toppling over.

Luffy was laughing his ass off, Usopp’s eyes were as big as Vivi’s, Nami was giggling helplessly, Zoro was chuckling into his drink, Carue looked confused, and Sanji…

Sanji’s face had reached a level of fuchsia that Kelly had no idea humans were even capable of turning until now.

“My compliments to the chef,” she said with an utterly unashamed smirk, flicking her tongue out over her lips, tasting the remnants of the drink (blueberry, kiwi, and some sort of sweet alcohol), and the strawberry chapstick Vivi used. It mingled together quite well on her tongue.

“P-p-p-p-p-p- _pervert! Shitty perverted bastard!_ ” Sanji shrieked so fast the words tripped over one another. It was the most amusing thing she had been able to witness in a very, very long time.

“What’s wrong, cook-san?” She asked, layering her voice in enough innocence to tranquilize a bull elephant. “I just wanted a taste of your Special Drink, after all, since you were going to be greedy about things.”

She nudged Vivi to the side just in time to dodge the shining loafer-clad foot that tried to knock her head off. She laughed, a low, easy sound, and something inside her eased up, just a little.

“Really, cook-san!” She protested, batting aside the kicks she couldn’t slip-slide around with a silent _Kami-e_. “This is a little _excessive_ , don’t you think?”

“How dare you act so familiarly to a princess!” he bellowed at her.

His face was a thing of utter beauty. The ugly fuchsia had faded, replaced with spots of bright red high in his cheekbones and a look of intense fury in his eyes that did a better job of knocking the air from her lungs than any of his kicks could. A vein pulsed in the gleaming column of white that was his neck, and she wondered how big his eyes would get if she stepped in and bit hard enough to bruise that perfect white skin.

His lips were furrowed, _pursed_ , his teeth gritted, and she wondered vaguely how it would feel to kiss those lips, what their taste would be. How she could etch her own furrows into his brow, make him snarl and _moan_ with pain and fear, oh it was so easy to imagine…

She was about ready to step into his guard and return some blows of her own – just to see the way his face would contort when she smashed her fist into his solar plexus – when Nami screamed “What the hell is that?!” and the world went dark.

They all looked up just in time to see the enormous dolphin go flying overhead. It was easily a couple hundred times bigger than the regular-sized version, and the ship promptly exploded into action.

Kelly thought it was rather cute, to be honest. After all, she’d swum with _Sea Kings_ , an overgrown dolphin didn’t bug her too much.

Even as she let Nami and Luffy’s orders flow over her ears, following them on autopilot, she watched Sanji out of the corner of her eye, finally beginning to recognize that awful thing snarling in her chest, the thing that wanted to bend the blond cook in all directions to see what would make him break. It was a volatile mixture of pitch-black hate and…and something else. Something that she instinctively shied away from as though it were a rabid zombie clown, mentally drop-kicking it into a lock-box in the very far regions of her mind.

She had enough problems as it was without having to think exactly why she wanted to bend Sanji over a table and fuck him senseless.

Well, she always did, but now it was even more so.

…

…God damn it there was something _wrong_ with her.

* * *

“So this is Little Garden…” Kelly said, looking around, leaning back against the railing, her arms folded over her chest. “A wee bit of false advertising, don’t you think?” she asked Nami with a chuckle.

The orange-haired woman sighed. “It’s not as cute as its name at all,” she agreed, looking around at the jungle surrounding them on either side.

Unlike the others, Kelly knew exactly what lived here, so she wasn’t nearly as shocked at the colossal size of their surroundings.

It was a tropical forest, wild and lush, bursting with colorful flora and the sounds of fauna, steamy and hot and increasingly humid, but supersized. The trees were stories high above their heads, and the plants she could see were enormous as well – insanely colored flowers bigger in width that she was tall, vines bigger than her body snaking around the trunks of trees, thickly dense grass that rose waist high in several places.

The noise was _immense_ , the jungle practically bursting at the seams with roars, howls, animal’s cries of every sound and pitch, the crunch of plants underneath paw and foot, the rustling of wind through the dense trees, and it buffeted Kelly’s senses from all sides until she dimmed her hearing to manageable levels.

Gin had his paws over his ears, curled around her shoulders, and Shere Khan was tucked into the front pocket of Kelly’s oversized jacket, leaving only her head peeking out.

“This is unexplored t-territory,” Usopp wibbled, his knees shaking. “An unexplored jungle!”

Kelly rolled her eyes. Cowardly fool.

“We must be careful,” Vivi said. “I’m still worried about what Miss All-Sunday said…”

“Does this mean there’s going to be monsters?!” Usopp cried.

“Who cares?” Luffy called out, eyes agog as he stared at the jungle around them.

“W-Well, let’s just go to the next island and not worry about this one, then.”

“Dude, we gotta let the Log Pose lock into this island before we go anywhere,” Kelly said with a yawn.

“We also need to stock up on provisions,” Sanji said. “We didn’t get a chance to stock up at the last town.”

Kelly yawned again – she certainly hadn’t had what you could call a restful night - and hoisted herself up onto the railing, swinging her cargo pant clad legs out over the river.

“Oi, Gin,” she said in a voice pitched too low for any of the humans to hear. “You doing all right?” She rubbed the space between the cat’s ears and he sighed.

“I’m fine, Mistress,” he said in an equally soft voice. “This place gives me a bit of a headache.”

“I know what you mean,” Kelly said wryly. “A wee bit crowded, wouldn’t you say?” She herself greatly preferred the wide open spaces of the ocean, where there was just clear blue water for miles above, below and around her.

“ _Sugei_ ,” Shere whispered from the belly pocket. “Mama, it’s just like home!”

It did indeed look a lot like Toratega Island, and for a brief moment Kelly felt a pang in her heart. Toratega had become the closest thing to a home and it had been the one place she had always been safe from Daemons.

...Well, there had been Aratuck, but she hadn’t exactly been safe there, now had she?

She closed her eyes as her back spasmed with pain, blocking everything else out until she could breathe normally again.

She turned around when Nami cried “What is that?!”

Diving towards Sanji’s back was an enormous dinosaur bird, with blue-green feathers, a purple crest, tennis-racket size claws, and at least a thirty foot wingspan. Sanji had obviously heard the beating of wings, and didn’t bother to turn around.

“It’s just some ordinary bird, Nami-san,” he said with a cheerful smile. “And this is just an ordinary jungle. Nothing to worry about.”

“Yo, Blondie, you might wanna try telling the bird that,” Kelly said, and pointed at the bird when he gave her a confused look. Nami and Usopp ran away, screaming, as the enormous thing got closer.

“Er, wha-” Sanji began, turning around. He dropped to the deck just in time, cursing, and the bird zoomed over his head with a hair-splitting, blood-curdling shriek. Feathers sprayed everywhere.

“What the HELL was that, you SHITTY BIRD?!” The blonde man bellowed, while Kelly threw her head back and roared with laughter. He turned on her, still growling, when a thunderous explosion rocked the ship, and a foul-smelling dust darkened parts of the sky.

“That’s nothing you hear in a normal jungle,” Nami whispered.

“That’s a volcano!!” Usopp yelled, well on his way to a mental breakdown by the looks of it.

There was a fearsome roar from the right side of the river, and a simply enormous tiger emerged from the treeline, yellow-green eyes glowing with what Kelly can tell was pain and encroaching death, but what Nami and Usopp must assume was hunger, because immediately both navigator and sniper were at either side of her, clinging and trembling in fright.

She rolled her eyes and patted them both on the head.

“Nami-san, you can hold onto me if the tiger frightens-”

“No.”

“… _Heh_.”

“WHAT WAS THAT, YOU PERVERTED SCOUNDREL-”

It followed their ship’s path for a few minutes, before the stink of death enveloped it completely, and Kelly quickly pushed Shere’s head back into the pocket with a sharp, mental order as the tiger collapsed, the coppery-sweet stink of blood making the Magus grind her teeth.

Nami ran back to the other railing closest to where the tiger had dropped, and stared at it.

“What, what happened to it? This isn’t normal. How can the King of the Jungle collapse in a puddle of its own blood?” she asked.

“Then it’s decided!” Usopp said. “We won’t be stopping on this island, let’s just go to the next one.”

“We’ll just sit here and wait until the Log Pose to set before we continue,” Nami said, sweat beading her brow.

“Yes!”

“Then we’ll get out of here as fast as possible.”

“Yes!”

Kelly quickly ducked back inside to make a quick change. She wasn’t going to pass up the chance to explore Little Garden, but she would need something a little bit more weather appropriate.

* * *

She slipped on her jacket, and quickly checked to make sure everything was in its place.

The clothes she now wore were all but covered in spells – magical symbols woven into the very fabric of the clothing in some cases – to allow for air flow, ease of movement, comfort, and to hide the fact that she was indeed a woman.

It was annoying, but extremely necessary, as Kelly had found out in the past years on the run.

“So, you’re going?” Gin asked as he leapt onto her shoulders again.

“Of course. Shere-chan, do you want to come?” She asked the cat on the bed.

The cub shot up. “I can _come_?” She asked excitedly, and Kelly laughed.

“Of course you can come, sweetheart,” she said, and the cub began bouncing around, giggling, and Kelly had to bite her lip and scoop the tigress up into her arms before she had a heart attack from the influx of _utter cute_.

Gin laughed as Shere reached up and lightly butted her face against his, a gesture he readily returned.

Kelly smiled and buried her face in Shere’s fur, breathing steadily, feeling warm and loved and loving in return. The bond between Magus and Familiar(s) was perhaps the one good thing she’d gotten out of all this mess. It was the concrete, unshaking, bone-marrow-deep knowledge that she had others in this big, cold, lonely world who loved her, would die for her, and better yet, would _live_ for her.

It had gotten her through more than one cold and lonely night where her back was pressed to the wall or tree or whatever surface of whatever place she’d been hiding, praying for the sun to rise so she could make a break for the ocean and get to safety.

“I love you guys, you know that?” She whispered, tucking Shere into the belly pocket of her jacket.

Gin’s purr rumbled through her spine, and Shere’s through her belly, and all was right in her world.

“ _Yosh_ ,” she said, cracking her knuckles. “Let’s go explore this fucking prehistoric jungle.”

Because if she didn’t, when she got home, Alexwould slap her upside the head. Because who in their right mind passed up a chance to explore a prehistoric forest? Especially when they were strong enough to take everything in said forest on and live.

* * *

_-…“And this is an Alamosaurus, an herbivorous dinosaur, found in the US, it’s the only Late Cretaceous sauropod that has been found in North America, don’t you know, and this is Allosaurus, from the Late Jurassic Period. Did you know the teeth of Allosaurus were 5 to 10 centimeters long and curved backwards to prevent prey from escaping…?”_

_Alex is bouncing. Literally bouncing, and it’s starting to scare her somewhat. Beth just chortles, hooks an arm through hers, and smiles at the boy who’s running his fingers over the air in front of each dinosaur display._

_“Down, boy-o, you’re scaring Kelly. Remember she’s never seen you like this before?” Beth chides without any real heat, and Alex blanches._

_“Er, sorry.”_

_It takes a beat for her brain to reengage, but she laughs and shakes her head. “Dude, you’ve gone with me to anime conventions, you know how I get. No need to be sorry about geeking out about something you love, I do it all the time. Christ, Lex, we’ve been best friends for years, how come I didn’t know this about you?” she demands, going to stand next to him as he looks up at the Allosaurus bone model._

_He shrugs. “We never really got a chance to talk about it. My dad hated it. Said it was a pussy habit-” and god, she has never hated Jim Oblensky more than she does in this moment right now – “And I just didn’t…” His ears are red and his eyes are dark, and Kelly restrains the urge to start swearing._

_She is so glad that fucktard excuse of a man is dead, and a look at Beth reveals the thought is mutual. Another look passes between the two of them, and they promptly loop their arms around each of his._

_“C’mon, Alex,” Beth says with a smile. “Why don’t you tell us more about this Wallosaurus thing?”_

_“Yeah,” Kelly chimes in just a beat after her. “Did you say it was from the Jurassic Park Period, or something?”_

_They’re deliberately butchering the things he’s told them, things they know, but it’s worth for the smile that quirks his lips up again and the spark that lights his eyes. They spend the rest of the day walking around the museum, ooh-ing and aw-ing at everything Alex told them, glaring at the old ladies and suburban parents who’ve obviously decided the three of them are some degenerate perverted threesome, and pigging out in the food court._

_It’s a very, very good day…-_


	7. Big Trouble in Little Garden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kelly explores Little Garden and interferes.

* * *

Little Garden was _amazing_.

Kelly flew through the trees, using the branches of one tree as a springboard to the next, lightly touching down only for a second before leaping to the next, smiling all the way.

She halted on a thick branch, high up in the canopy, surprising a flock of brightly colored birds screaming into the sky. Laughing, she flung up her arms.

“Look, Ma, I’m a ninja!” She crowed and collapsed into a heap of convulsive giggles.

She’d sent Gin and Shere Khan ahead, to find the wax home that Mr. 3 made, with orders to locate the Eternal Log to Arabasta and a bellyful of magic so they could easily protect themselves from the island’s more…prehistoric residents.

Kelly knew _full well_ that it was Sanji who was supposed to find the Log, but Kelly _also_ knew that if she had the Log, if she found it _before_ Sanji did, then…

A burst of riotous laughter startled an enormous camouflaged python who’d been coiled sleepily around the tree’s trunk, making it rise up threateningly before Kelly could soothe it back into sleep, apologizing for interrupting its nap. Kelly grinned as the python rested its head on her shoulder, flicking its tongue out to brush against her cheek. She ran a single finger over its immense coils.

She could only imagine how utterly _pissed off_ Sanji would be, if she received the grateful hug from – was it Nami or Vivi? She couldn’t remember. But the thought of making the blond man even angrier than he already was sent her into yet another fit of giggles, so much so the dark brown python gave her a quizzical look. She nuzzled it.

“Just being stupid, darling. Go back to sleep,” she whispered, and the python was happy to oblige.

Kelly had a definite fondness for serpents, one that had extended well back into her childhood. She’d always been good with animals (and this was before she’d become a Magus), but – then and now – she had an especial affection for serpents, who gave her unswerving loyalty, be they of the land or the sea.

All animals liked her (or at least could be persuaded into liking her, as was the case with herbivorous animals and some types of fish), but serpents liked her the most. She assumed the reason for that was a combination of her being both a Magus and a Snake herself.

She yawned and looked out over the jungle. She was high up, her perch giving her a spectacular view of the canopy of Little Garden and the volcano in the distance. She leaned back against the trunk, letting the wind cool her face.

Her clothes – being as spelled for cool and air flow as they were – had kept her nice and comfortable in the hot, humid jungle, but her face had still gained a light sheen of sweat from her race through the trees and a run-in with a particularly vicious velociraptor-esque thing.

The air shook as the volcano let loose another thunderous rumble, spewing ash and lava into the air.

“Dorry and Broggy must be starting their fight,” Kelly said to herself, her attention more on the beautiful view than anything else. Her fingers itched, like worms crawling beneath the flesh, wrapping around her bones.

She wanted to draw it. She wanted to draw that view so _damned_ bad.

The prehistoric jungle canopy, spreading out for miles, green and lush, with tiny spots of color here and there, with the volcano in the far distance, coated with lava and belching perfectly formed clouds of gas into the achingly blue sky. Her throat and fingers ached at the view.

She had her Sack with her and in it were the new art supplies she’d impulsively bought at Loguetown. So she could, if she wanted to. She had all the time in the world.

The blue and gold-threaded strap wrapped around her chest suddenly felt too tight and she sucked in a desperate breath of air _-…”What are you drawing, Kel?” Kelly looks up and smiles involuntarily at her girlfriend, smudged at the edges with dirt from the garden she’d just come from working in. Her light-blonde hair was pulled back into a_

_“Just a picture of the view,” Kelly says, gesturing at the open window and the breathtaking view Kelly’s house above the valley affords her of Aratuck Island and the ocean that lies beyond, as the sun casts its crimson light in wide arcs across the water, just beginning on its daily journey across the sky._

_Mina leans over her shoulder and Kelly unobtrusively takes a deep whiff, eyes closing in subtle enjoyment of the blonde woman’s scent, of growing things and newly turned soil erotically edged with the lily of the valley scent she habitually wears._

_“Kelly, this is amazing,” Mina says in frank astonishment, and Kelly blinks, coming out of her light trance._

_“What?”_

_“Kelly, why did you not tell me you are such a wonderful artist?” the woman asks almost reverently, running a fingertip over the edge of the paper Kelly had drawn the view on._

_Kelly shrugs. “I’m not. Nothing special, I mean, and it’s been so long since I had the opportunity to draw anything, I just, I mean…” Ears burning, she looks away, only to jerk reflexively when Mina kisses her neck._

_“You are a wonderful artist, my love,” the shorter woman says quietly, then smiles. “We’ll have to get it framed, hang it somewhere where everyone can see it.”_

_Kelly blinks in shock. “Y-You’re serious.”_

_“Of course I am.” Mina straddles her lap, setting the notebook behind her on the desk. Kelly’s hands go to her hips, holding the curvaceous woman in place as she rests her arms on either side of Kelly’s head._

_They smile at each other, and Kelly feels a soft warmth in her heart when she asks “Can I draw you?” and Mina whispers “It would be an honor.”_

_They don’t do much else for the rest of the morning (after all, Kelly has a gorgeous woman on her lap, she’s not going to do much else but pay her the appropriate attention), but when the moon rises high in the sky Kelly slips out of bed and spends four hours drawing the naked Aphrodite she’s somehow managed to trick into falling in love with her…-_ Kelly pressed a hand to her face, biting down hard on the inside of her cheek until hot, salty blood filled her mouth, and she swallowed, the coppery taste of her own blood and the pain driving away the tears that burned her eyes.

Turning away from the view, she patted the python as it began spiraling up the trunk, heading for higher territory.

She leapt to a lower tree, and continued her path through the jungle.

* * *

_(Mistress.)_

The word spread across one of the bands that coiled out from the immense wellspring of magic that rumbled deep within her belly, racing up the covering of power that coated her spine until it fizzled across her brain. Kelly blinked as she opened her eyes.

She ran her fingers across the soft fur of the spotted panther cub she’d been healing, then pushed the cub back to her mother, who licked her cheek.

“Be careful, kiddos,” she told them, brushing a hand across their fur, feeling the mother purr under her touch. The mother scooped her child up in her mouth and took off, vanishing into the tree Kelly rested against.

 _Gin?_ She sent the question reverberating back over the coil the message had come from.

_(We’ve found the Eternal Log, Mistress.)_

Kelly grinned. _Good. I’ll wait here for you…How’s Shere?_

 _:Hi Mama:_ Accompanying the greeting was a distinct sound of enjoyment and contentment, and the faint echo of razor-sharp teeth crunching through bone, and the warmth of meat and blood resting in her belly. Kelly smiled.

_Did you find something good to eat, my darling?_

_(She took down a pterodactyl)_ Gin said dryly.

It took a few moments for that to register. _Come again?_

_(She took down a **pterodactyl**. Hid in a tree and waited until it came close and took it down mid-transformation. Thing had a thirty foot wing-span and it crumpled like wet paper when she got her claws in it.)_

Kelly blinked, then stood up. _…Did you_ really _, Shere Khan?_

_:Mm! And it tastes really delicious Mama, do you want me to save you some?:_

_No thank you darling, I’m not hungry._ It took a great deal of willpower to keep the amusement out of her reply. _Good for you, Shere. I’ll be waiting here after you finish._

_(We’ll be there soon, Mistress.)_

_:Om nom nom:_

It was only when she was certain that her two Familiars were busy did Kelly give into the tickle in the back of her throat and roared with laughter.

Those two were ridiculous. Good grief.

* * *

She tucked the hourglass-esque device into the Sack, where it would be safe against everything but a nuclear warhead, so spelled and magicked was the infinite bag.

“Well done, my darlings,” she said, as Shere Khan immediately began shrinking back down into her original size, only to stop, look around, and then begin to grow again, back to the horse-sized tiger she’d been when she’d emerged from the trees.

With a fearsome snarl, Gin began to grow as well until he was the same size as Shere, a sleek black mountain of a panther, and Kelly realized why just as a faint buzzing across her skin turned into a roaring in her ears and the scent of sickly sweet, rotting things filled her nose. Her heart dropped through her stomach, even as she quickly dropped the Sack into the roots of the tree.

 _‘God damn it,’_ she thought with a snarl of her own.

Then there was a terrible noise, a screechy, twitchy, awful sort of sound that emanated through the trees as Kelly moved into the center of the clearing, Gin and Shere watching her blind spots. Kelly quickly shucked her gloves, tucking them into her pocket, and allowed a small amount of magic to fizzle through her hands, turning her nails razor-sharp and black as pitch. She usually kept her nails filed and lily white, but in a pinch, she could turn them back to the state they had been in for several weeks.

They were a pain in the ass, but made her attacks about twenty times more effective.

“Where are you, you fucking abomination of nature…?” Kelly hissed.

“sO rUdE…” The scratchy, inhuman voice cackled, making the hair on the back of her neck stand straight up. She could only sense one, which was a relief, but a Daemon who could survive in the Grand Line had to be a strong one.

“Why don’t you come down and say hello, then? I can’t make nice if I don’t have a face to put with the voice, now can I?” Kelly said, letting her arms hang light and loose at her sides, Gin and Shere watchful, waiting in anticipation.

This would be a perfect way of gauging her own strength, because she hadn’t fought a Daemon in a little over two years. Aratuck had been blissfully free of the monsters.

(Well, it had been free of the _Daemons_. There had been plenty of _monsters_ on Aratuck.)

There it was. It was ‘hidden’ in the shadows of the trees to her left, staring at her with hundreds of eyes in places they didn’t belong, all bloody-red with hunger. It was a squat thing, with eight spider legs that have too many joints in them, an enormous, football shaped, black body, and a head split down the middle to reveal a gaping maw of razor-sharp, gnashing teeth.

It whined, a low, awful sound no human could ever hope to replicate.

“So _HuNgRy_ …” it wheezed. “BlOoD, bLoOd Of A mAgUs, FOoOoOoOd…”

It wasn’t humanoid, which was a relief. Kelly had been hunted by all levels of the Daemon Hierarchy in her years, from the Animalistic to the Highborn.

The Highborn, who could masquerade as humans themselves, were the most dangerous Daemons. This one leaned more towards the Animalistic side of the spectrum, but it could talk, which mean it was packing _some_ sort of power.

The magic rumbled through her veins, setting every nerve-ending alight with power, and Kelly gave the creature a smile that would have sent anything with half a brain screaming in the opposite direction.

The break had been good while it lasted. But now it was time to _really_ let herself loose.

Perhaps it would even be fun.

* * *

Okay, maybe it wasn’t as fun as she had thought it would be.

She trembled, body still pumping adrenaline through her veins like liquid lightning.

The oozing sack of flesh, rotting bones, and blinking eyes twitched, feebly reaching out one of the unbroken limbs that hadn’t been ripped off, stripped of their flesh, or mangled beyond repair. Kelly stamped down on its head with one iron-plated hiking boot, the spells woven into the metal crushing what little life there still was in the creature.

The thing let out a horrible, gurgling groan that trailed off into a hideous whine, then finally, _blessedly_ , to silence.

She groaned and stepped back, rolling her shoulders. Gin stepped up behind her, letting her rest her back against his broad side. Shere was already in her smaller form, resting atop Gin.

“Are you all right, Mistress?” Gin asked.

“Mm, yeah,” Kelly said, taking a deep breath as her magic raced across her limbs, healing the cuts and bruises. She grunted as it stole beneath the skin under her chest, pulling her shattered ribs back into place, the free-floating fragments fusing back to the original bone.

She threw herself away from Gin as the poison that had turned her lower intestine to mush was forcibly expelled in the wake of the magic that was healing her, vomiting helplessly for several minutes. She spat black bile and mucus for several minutes more before she was certain there was no more poison left in her body, then shakily wiped the gunk from her face.

Kelly staggered back onto her feet and lurched away from the mess. But before she could fall flat on her face, Gin got his body behind hers.

The brown-haired woman draped herself ungainly over his back, pressing her face into Shere Khan’s orange fur.

She groaned. “By the Gods, I’m out of practice.”

“It’s been two years, Mistress. It’s only to be expected,” Gin said, tossing her the Sack. She sat upright, and pulled a water canteen from it, taking a long drink. It was ice-cold spring water lightly flavored with lemon, perfect for getting the taste out of her mouth after a battle with Daemons.

“Let’s go see if we can find the others. Everything should be finished by now,” the Magus said quietly, sketching in the air the magical sign that quickly cleaned the Daemon’s blood and viscera from her clothes and her Familiars’ fur.

She’d underestimated the monster and it had nearly gotten her killed. She pressed a hand to her chest as the final bone fragments fused back into place and winced, the magic not bothering to chase away the dull aches and light bruising.

 _‘Let it stay,’_ she thought, grinding her teeth as she remembered the fight, her face burning with shame. _‘Let it be a reminder against the follies of such stupid arrogance.’_

The sun burned with hideous brightness, and the very air itself seemed to warp and twist around the fuming Magus.

* * *

Perhaps it was awful of her, but seeing the ridiculous pose Zoro had struck in the wax candle thing Mr. 3 had trapped him, Vivi, and Nami in made her giggle maniacally. She took back everything she’d said before, Zoro was a _dork_ of the highest order.

“Mistress…” Gin said with a long suffering sigh, resting beside her on the thick branch of the tree they’d hidden in to watch the fight between Luffy, Usopp, Carue and the Baroque Works’ Agents.

“What?” she asked him, smirking in childish delight. “It’s funny, Gin-Aido!”

“Mistress, it’s not funny. At all. Have you even thought about what being encased in wax alive is like? Have you even considered the fact that those three could very well be cognizant of everything that’s happening to them? That they feel every ounce of wax coating their organs, their innards, choking the very breath from their lungs inch by inch? Have you considered _that_? You know well what that sort of torture is like, after all. It wouldn’t be past the realm of possibility for them to be _completely awake and aware of what’s going on._ ” Gin asked, his silver eyes sharp and a little disappointed.

Kelly blinked, taken aback.

“Mama, I wonder if it hurts…” Shere whispered, looking down at the enormous, spinning, pumpkin candle thing and the humans trapped in it.

“But that…” Kelly trailed off.

“But what?” Gin asked, just as quietly as ever. “That’s not what happens in the manga and anime? Mistress, that was a _book_. A _story_. This is not. This world is not fictional Mistress, no matter how you wish it to be, and the people in it are as real as you and I.”

She stiffened at the censorious tone, fighting the urge to say something stupid. She had a hundred utterly cruel, utterly awful retorts boiling behind her teeth, but she bit her tongue. She was a vicious bitch when she was angry or embarrassed, she’d _always_ been that way, but now it was even worse. If it had been anyone else in the world chastising her, she would have let that temper nail them just where it hurt, made them back the fuck off, but…

But to _Gin_?

To one of only two beings in the world that had been by her side for years? To the one who taught her, her magic and Rokushiki, who had saved her life more times than she could count?

To the man who held her when the nightmares made sleep impossible?

She breathed in and out slowly, biting back the bile until it vanished. She smoothed a hand over Gin’s fur.

“It’s hard,” she said quietly. “It’s hard to think of this world as real, that the people in it are real. That’s means I,” The words lodged in her throat as she remembered-

_-…what comes from her mouth is a sound no human could ever make, a howl like a thousand dying animals. The bonds snap like twigs, and her magic comes roaring back into her conscious mind like a tidal wave. The man crouched over her stumbles back, a scream on his lips, but she is on him before a sound passes from his mouth. Her teeth bite down deep and she pulls, rips, **tears** through his flesh, sending arterial blood splattering everywhere. He dies, choking, drowning in his own blood as she stalks out into the main house, the world disappearing into a blur of colors, but the sounds and smells amplified times a thousand._

_Gunpowder, smoke, metal, sweat, blood, a thumping sound that grows faster – she strikes out with her claws and the guard who’s trying to kill her goes down, trying to scoop his innards back into his body even as the rapid thumping slows and stops completely._

_She hears a hundred of those thumping, beating sounds approaching, and hisses with fury. She will kill them all. They are **nothing**. Sacks of flesh, bone, and blood, blood that will coat her hands, her mouth, her body by the time she is finished scouring this mansion of those who betrayed her._

_She will find that old hag, that bitch Usana who’d trapped her in her house and saw her as nothing more than a womb, uterus, and cunt, and she will take great pleasure in wringing her wrinkled neck._

_But only after she has killed every member of Usana’s family first._

_It is the first time she actively seeks to kill, to **eradicate** , and it is so very, very easy._

_Later she will wonder at this, and she will wonder:_

_‘Was I supposed to feel anything at all?’…_ -and she shuddered, coming back to herself.

“It means I have to accept that I’m…I’m a… _murderer_ ,” she whispered. “That I’m… _not_ who I was. That the Kelly I was died a long, long time ago. I’d rather not. If I think about that for too long, I’m not…not going to deal with it well. So I make jokes. I laugh at stupid shit like that goddamned monstrosity Mr. 3 built. It’s how I deal with things. How I’ve always dealt with things. And I _have_ to stay distant from them. I have to. God knows I’m already invested beyond what I thought I’d be,” Kelly said with an irritated sigh.

The blush stealing across Nami’s face as Kelly laid a kiss to her palm, the panic and terror in Luffy’s eyes as he screamed for his nakama stuck in the belly of Laboon, the devilish grin in Zoro’s eyes as he faced down the Whisky Peak bounty hunters, the red-hot fury in Sanji’s eyes and voice as she flirted with Nami, and the elaborate, extravagant tales that spilled with disturbing ease from Usopp.

Kelly turned back to the battlefield, struggling for composure, just in time to see Carue and Usopp get shot in the back by one of Mr. 5’s Breath Bomb Bullets as he tried to shoot something at the wax statue.

Then she stared, a little blindly, at the three figures encased in wax on the candle, vaguely noting Luffy and Mr. 3’s fight _-…She was choking, choking, she couldn’t breathe, and the man giggled as tears slipped from her eyes, her body immobile. “A Magus Golem,” he whispered, excitedly. “Finally, I’ll have a Magus Golem, and you shall protect my village for years and years to come.” And the stone was growing in her lung, coating her organs, and it hurt so much…-_ and wondered if Gin was right.

Were they awake in there?

Usopp managed to stay on his feet. She had no idea how, but he did, and grabbed the slingshot yet again. He was horribly injured, she could smell it, but he aimed once more.

“My-My friends,” he whispered. “I have to save my friends-” He was cut off as another Breath Bomb crashed into him, and he spewed blood, his eyes rolling up into his head as he dropped to his knees.

Kelly couldn’t breathe. _‘And I called him a coward,’_ she thought ashamedly, even as he gestured to Carue with a huge coil of rope he pulled from his backpack. Things seemed to be heading along the proper lines, as it were. Carue would race around the candle, Luffy would use Mr. 3’s lit-candle head to set the blaze, and everything would be all right.

Then there was yet another explosion, but this time it was _Carue_ who was sent flying, to land crumpled several yards away from Usopp.

“CARUE!” Usopp and Luffy screamed, even as the Baroque Works’ agents laughed.

“It’s time we finished this,” Mr. 5 said, and aimed the gun at Usopp again. Luffy was unable to do anything, with Mr. 3 keeping him from getting close to the marksman. Carue was unconscious. The wax was still pouring down over those too-still figures.

And Kelly knew if that bullet hit Usopp again, he would die.

 _‘This isn’t how it was supposed to go,’_ she thought numbly. _‘Why, oh Gods, why, he’s going to die, someone do something, I can’t move, I shouldn’t move, I’m not allowed-’_

The trigger was pulled back. Luffy screamed in fury. Usopp’s eyes closed, resigned, trembling.

“Super Breeze Breath Bullet,” Mr. 5 said, and let it fly.

“Mistress, do something!” Gin all but screamed it.

Miss Valentine was laughing that annoying, chittering laugh.

_“SORU!”_


	8. A Lonely Man Walking in a Lonely Fog

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Usopp wonders, and Kelly steps over the line.

* * *

**USOPP**

He was going to die.

Oh, he didn’t _want_ to die, especially not now, not when his friends needed him so much. But he couldn’t move – his bones felt like jelly, he ached all over, and he felt as though his muscles had turned to 1,000 pound weights – and he knew that here, facing a man who could make any part of himself explode, that was a death sentence.

“ _USOPP_!” Luffy screamed as Mr. 5 cocked the gun.

The sniper closed his eyes. Why wasn’t he stronger? Why wasn’t he faster? Why wasn’t he cleverer? Sanji and Zoro wouldn’t be in this position if they’d been in his shoes. They would have beaten the crap out of Mr. 5, saved them all.

Nami and Vivi would have managed to talk their way out of this, somehow. They were ridiculously smart, and Usopp knew Nami could talk a man out of the shirt on his back if she tried hard enough.

He saw Carue’s singed body lying some yards away, the wax steadily choking the rest of the life from his friends’ still bodies, and Luffy – red-faced, hoarse from screaming, and burned down one side – fighting to get past Mr. 3. He saw the still, wax-coated form of the fallen Elbaf giant, and Usopp wished – oh, by the Gods, how he _wished_ – he was stronger, a real “warrior of the sea”.

_‘I’m sorry,_ ’ he thought to his nakama. _‘I tried, I really did. But that wasn’t good enough. I’ve never been good enough, and now my friends and I going to die because of it.’_

He tried so very hard not to cry.

He would not disgrace himself by crying like a baby, not in front of Luffy. There was the faintest puff of air, and Usopp gritted his teeth, waiting for the end. The Baroque Works’ agents were all laughing, Luffy was screaming-but then.

Then he heard someone yelling – _“SORU!”_ – and then there was a figure standing between him and certain death, shadowed by the glaring light of the overhead sun.

“ _Tekkai_ ,” the figure said, voice as cold as ice and harder than diamonds, and the air bomb rushing towards them _flattened_ as it slammed into the figure’s outstretched palms, dispersing – harmlessly – into the air around them.

He stared. _‘Who-?’_ He thought wildly, but then the figure knelt down, and the words caught in his throat.

It was Ciel.

Ciel Russo, with a mischievous laugh and grin for anyone who cared to look twice in his direction, who moved like a cobra when he walked, who knew how to press Sanji’s buttons better than anyone – including _Zoro_ – who flirted outrageously with Nami, and who loved his cats more than anything.

Ciel knelt in front of him with eyes the color of jade, muscles pulled tight and taut in a face pale with fury, the sun blazing around his head like some deity’s golden crown.

“What do I need to do, Usopp?” the man asked quietly.

His mouth worked, trying to form words, but he coughed instead, and blood filled his mouth, spilling over his lips. When he managed to get himself under control and looked back up at Ciel, he felt something deep inside of him cringe away in terror.

Ciel's face was blank, not an expression on it but for the eyes.

In his home village, they’d often have fall festivals, with sweet treats, lively music, and enormous bonfires made from fallen leaves. Sometimes they’d chop down whole trees and use them to fuel the fires. Usopp remembered watching one when he was about five, watching an oak crisp and burn in the flames, and at the very heart of the twelve-foot high bonfire, he could see a painfully bright green flame, the color of emeralds.

Ciel's eyes burned like that green fire did, with a slow, intense fury, but the hand he laid on Usopp’s cheek was gentle. He scooped the oil soaked rope up in his other.

“You did very well, kiddo,” Ciel said. “Yer friends are alive. I’ll take it from here.” Then he paused, looking – of all things – _uncertain_ , before sighing. “Oh, fuck it,” he whispered, and pressed a finger to Usopp’s head.

The sniper let out a groan of relief as something warm stole beneath his ribs, healing the bruising and internal damage. Even as the warmth continued to ease his aches, one end of the rope was placed in his hand.

“Hold this for me,” Ciel ordered and closed his hand into a fist around it. “Can you do that, Usopp?”

He nodded, still dumbfounded and a little bit light-headed from the warmth seeping into his skin.

“Good man.” The dark-haired man stood, letting the rope hang loose around his wrist, the end clasped tightly in in his hand. “Let’s do this then.”

Mr. 5 pointed the barrel of the gun at Ciel, who didn't even flinch. “Just where do you think you’re going, hm?”

Ciel laughed, a dark, awful sound and shook his head. “Moron.” Then he disappeared.

Usopp barely had enough time to clench his hand around the rope end he held before it shot out of his grip. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing – or rather, what he _wasn’t_ seeing. The dark haired man was moving so fast he seemed to teleport from place to place, landing lightly on one section of the wax, before disappearing to the next, leaving sections of the oil-soaked rope embedded in his wake.

_Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang!_ Mr. 5 shot again and again, trying to hit Ciel, but every last shot missed.

Usopp felt himself smile so wide it was painful. He quickly lunged for his bag to get something to light the rope, only to get crushed flat into the ground by an enormous weight against his back.

“I don’t think so. _Crescendo Stone_ ,” Miss Valentine said. She turned to look down at him, smiling unpleasantly as Usopp choked under the sudden and crushing weight. “I wonder how many kilos you can stand? 10 kilos? 30 kilos?” Usopp felt the ground cave under the pressure being forced into and through his body and spat blood, his ribs creaking dangerously.

How were they going to win? He couldn’t reach his slingshot or anything to start a fire, not with his bag so far away and this monster crushing his internal organs. Usopp kept reaching for his bag, but his eyes looked furiously around the battlefield, looking for anything that could start a sufficient fire to light the rope. Then he saw it.

“Luffy!” he cried out, choking as the weight increased. “Luffy, use Mr. 3’s flame to light the rope!!”

His captain stopped, skidding back several feet. “What?”

“LIGHT THE DAMN ROPE WITH THE FIRE, LUFFY!!!!” Usopp hollered with all the air he still had left in his lungs. “IT’LL SAVE THE OTHERS!” ‘ _C’mon, Luffy, use that tiny brain of yours and think, damn it!’_

Luffy’s eyes lit and he turned back to Mr. 3. One rubbery hand shot out and latched around the bottom of the three, right below the flame. He immediately began dragging the Baroque Works’ officer to the rope.

“Everyone wake up! Wake up!” He yelled.

Usopp sighed in relief, only to choke in shock as the weight on his back increased tenfold.

“You little _shit_ ,” Miss Valentine snarled, the rage contorting her face into something awful. “How dare you interfere with us! _100 kilos! 200 kilos! 300 kilos!_ ”

Usopp would have screamed, had there been any air left in his lungs. _‘Damn it Luffy, h-hurry up!’_

“ _Tetsu-tai ken!_ ” And then he heard Miss Valentine scream and the pressure left his back. He was hurriedly pulled out of the crater the officer had forced him into, and cradled against a hard body. His limbs flopped uselessly, his cheek resting against a thickly muscled shoulder, and then the world was a blur of color.

When everything finally stopped moving, he was nestled in the thick roots of one of the large trees bordering the battleground, with Carue laying on the ground beside him, Gin and Shere Khan curled around the injured bird, and Ciel standing in front of him.

“Close yer eyes, Usopp,” the man said, leaning over him and bracing his arms above Usopp’s head.

Usopp closed his eyes.

There was a tiny _puff_ of noise, then a riotous wave of color burst like fireworks behind his eyelids. He could feel the insane heat through the very tree itself, which trembled and groaned, so strong was the fire.

_‘The tree_ ,’ Usopp thought to himself, dazed and delirious from the pain and the heat, _‘sounded like it was crying.’_

“It’s okay,” Ciel was whispering – whispering to the _tree_? – and Usopp managed to open his eyes, if only for a brief second.

Ciel's eyes glowed like emeralds baked in the heart of the sun, and vines of pure, green energy vanished into the tree, keeping it steady.

“It’s okay,” Ciel whispered to the tree. “I have you, my love, just stay standing.”

Usopp closed his eyes as the inferno blazed, and waited for it to recede, his mind capable of taking nothing else.

* * *

Usopp didn’t know if anyone else saw it, but when Nami and Vivi had latched onto Ciel after the man had produced a perfectly whole Eternal Log from his bag, the dark-eyed man had…

Had _flinched._

It had only lasted for less than a second, but Usopp had seen it, he knew it had happened, before Kel managed to master himself and return the hugs – faking an ease Usopp could see the man didn’t have.

He’d never seen anyone – in his life – that uncomfortable with another human touching them.

No, wait…he _had_ seen it before. Back when he was little, when his Mama had been the main doctor on the island, a pirate ship had been wrecked in a vicious storm, and the only one who had survived had been a man – a slave to the pirates.

He’d remembered wanting to go ask the man questions about what it was like to live with pirates – because then he’d been too young to realize what the man had gone through – but his Mama had told him not to, eyes tight and sad and hard.

She told him then _-…”Not all pirates are like your father, and most people fear the skull and crossbones for a very, very good reason.”…-_ and he’d watched through the window as the man woke up, delirious and confused and his Mama had gone to help him.

What had happened next had scared him deeply _-_

_…His Mama moves slowly towards the man staring at the wall, like she is approaching a wild animal, and lays a hand on his shoulder as Usopp watches. The man flinches, sharp and involuntary, and whirls around, pressing his back against the wall, all the while letting out these half gasps and cut-off noises that could be words but aren’t anything coherent._

_Usopp doesn’t know why this man is so afraid of his Mama. His Mama is the best doctor in the village, warm and kind and strong, full of glittering, colorful stories from her time as a Marine patrolling the Grand Line, and with capable, gentle hands that could heal anything from a cut on the knee to bullet wound. Obviously this man didn’t know anything, Usopp decides._

_His Mama whispers now, quiet and gently, “My name is Banchina, what’s yours? It’s a beautiful day outside, if you’re feeling better I’ll take you outside so you can see the sun, feel it on your skin. It’s a wondrous feeling, isn’t it, the sun? Warmer than most people can bear, I’ve often found, but I love it. When I was a Marine, I spent hours on the deck basking in the sun. My men used to laugh at me, called me a lizard. But after we spent months on end battling our way through storms that threatened to overturn the ship and seeing only gray skies, they realized why I liked it and joined me after a while. They called themselves ‘Banchina’s Lizard Squad”, can you believe it? Such idiots. Anyway, do you feel up to eating anything…”_

_On and on his Mama speaks, softly and slowly, until the terror and pain that darkens the man’s eyes and tenses his shoulders begins to seep away. Tears spill over the man’s cheeks and he weeps like a baby into Banchina’s arms._

_A year later, the man will leave Syrup Village, headed for the home that was stolen from him. He’s as healthy as Usopp’s Mama can make him, but he never does quite stop flinching when someone touches him without his permission…_

-and he still remembered that man to this day.

Even though that man and Ciel were as different as night and day – no one could ever accuse Ciel Russo of being fearful of anything – that fear in the man’s eyes had been the same fear that flickered through Ciel's. He found his eyes drawn towards the dark-haired man as he smirked at a fuming Sanji – Usopp snorted at how easily Ciel pushed all of Sanji’s buttons – and he wondered what had put that fear in Ciel's eyes.

What could make a man with such skill and power so wary of other humans?

Later, as they sailed away from Little Garden, Usopp caught the taller man watching him with dark, cold, inexplicably sad eyes, and felt his soul shrink away in fear.

* * *

Usopp yawned, idly casting a look out over the sea before turning back to the blueprints he’d been working. It was how he spent the night watches he so often volunteered for. It was generally quiet at night, perfect for working on his weapons and inventions.

He smiled ruefully. He’d learned quickly not to work on certain ammunition whenever there was a chance Luffy could interrupt. The spices and Tabasco he worked with were _not_ to be mishandled – he learned his lesson the last time Luffy knocked a whole vial of it into his unprotected eyes. He shuddered.

He looked up at the sky through the light fog the ocean had shrouded the ship with, only to blink as a voice reached his ears.

“ _Are you goin' to Scarborough Fair? Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme._ _Remember me to one who lives there, she once was a true love of mine…”_

He didn’t recognize the voice, hauntingly deep and hypnotizing. Then a shiver of fear wrapped around his spine. He’d heard stories about voices like that. Voices that could convince a man to walk off his ship and be dragged down to the deep by women with ragged hair and too many teeth.

_“Tell her to make me a cambric shirt. On the side of a hill in the deep forest green. Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme. Tracing a sparrow on snow-crested ground without no seams nor needlework. Blankets and bedclothes the child of the mountain…”_

Sea-singers, mermaids, sirens of the deep. Usopp began shaking as the mournful words curled around his ears, urging him closer and closer to the edge of the crow’s nest.

_“Tell her to find me an acre of land on the side of a hill, a sprinkling of leaves. Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme. She washes the grave with silvery tears between salt water and the sea strands…”_

He didn’t want to look over the edge. But he had to. What if it really was a monster? Everyone else was asleep but him, the monster could kill them all in their sleep. But Zoro and Sanji and Luffy were all really strong, and so was Ciel, so they shouldn’t need him, right?

Against his will, his body inched towards the side of the crow’s nest, sweat breaking out over his body, his fingers trembling-

“Usopp?”

“GYAAA!” He shrieked at the voice that came from behind him. He whirled around, his heart pounding like a drum in his chest and saw Ciel climbing over the edge of the crow’s nest. The man stopped and blinked.

“Are you all right?” Ciel asked, raising an eyebrow as he took a seat opposite Usopp.

Usopp struggled to control his breathing, slumping against the wood behind him.

“Do you make _any_ noise?” he got out, rubbing his chest.

The sound that came from the taller man would have been a snort of laughter from anyone else.

“Nah,” he said, eyes twinkling with mischief. “It’s too much fun watching people jump when I sneak up on them.”

Usopp twitched. “ _Gaaah_ , you _bastard_ ,” he said.

Ciel chortled. “Such compliments!”

Then there was a silence between the two of them, not quite comfortable, a subtle tension growing in the air as Usopp remembered what Kel had done in Little Garden.

What was Ciel, anyway? Had the man eaten some Devil Fruit? That wouldn’t explain why he hadn’t told any of them about it, though that could be the reason why Ciel had asked to come along. They had a Devil fruit user as a captain, they wouldn’t be quite so liable to freak out because of someone’s powers.

But why hadn’t Ciel told them about it?

“Hey Ciel-”

“Usopp, tell me about your home.”

Usopp blinked at the non sequitur.

“Uh, why do you want to know?” He asked.

Ciel smiled at him, and something about that smile made sweat break out on the back of his neck.

“Just curious. I do so love to hear stories, and you are a master storyteller, Usopp, if I could venture my own opinion. Do you think you could tell me some?”

Usopp felt his chest swell as Kel cocked his head at him, eyes shining with admiration.

“Well, I don’t know-” _‘And wait a minute, what was he doing? He wanted to ask Ciel what he had done at Little Garden!_ “-I’m not that good…”

His mind felt warm and fuzzy, like it had when he had snuck a taste of his mother’s spiced mead back when he was six.

“Nonsense, Usopp,” and Ciel's voice had taken a warm, liquid-y quality, smooth as silk on his ears, as addictive as chocolate. “Tell me. Tell me some of the stories you have in your head, and tell me the stories of your home. Syrup Island, am I right, my dear boy? Tell me stories of the leaves in autumn, the people you saw in your childhood, the food you ate for breakfast, for lunch, and dinner. Tell me stories of the girl who you gave the first vestige of that overwhelming imagination to. Tell me stories of _Kaya_ , of _Banchina_ , of _Yasopp_ , dear, dear Usopp. **_Tell me_** …”

He talked. He told the other man as many stories as he could, felt the words – fictional and real, sometimes blurring the lines between the two – pour from his lips in and unstoppable flood, drowning out the little voice in his head that was screaming - _What the hell is going on, what is he doing to us?!_ \- until it could be heard no longer.

Around an hour he talked, basking in the frank and admiring attention of the older man, until Ciel offered to take the watch until dawn.

“You can get some sleep,” he offered, still smiling, and Usopp really saw no reason to argue. He clambered down the ladder and all but staggered to the door that led down into the boy’s room.

He stopped at the door, his mind suddenly straining, straining, desperately trying to reach something just beyond his grasp – _what did I forget, what did I forget_ – before the exhaustion roared back into the fore of his mind.

He would no longer think about what he’d seen Ciel do with that strange power on Little Garden.

There were no longer any such memories of it in his head, after all.

* * *

Kelly looked out into the sky and let the tears come freely, swirling down her cheeks, misting into the deep, dense fog the ship was slowly passing through.

_“Are you going to Scarborough Fair? Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme. Remember me to one who lives there, she once was a true love of mine…”_ she whispered, and she had never felt more ashamed.


	9. There Are Dark Things in This World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kelly dreams.

* * *

_"GET HER!”_

_She can feel the mob-lust thickening the air as she runs and it almost steals the breath straight from her lungs, so rotten and wretched a stench it is. She staggers and screams as an arrow enters her shoulder, driving her forward and pinning her to a fallen sheet of wood resting against a building._

_The panic is now a jittery dance of bile and shock in her throat, and she sobs, curling her left hand around the shaft and yanking it free. Blood splatters everywhere and the howl that leaves her throat is a truly unholy one, even as she incinerates the arrow with a quick spell._

_“SHE’S OVER HERE!” She whips around, the few strands of dark hair she hadn’t shorn almost to the skull falling in her face. She moans in pain and fear, and digs around in the leather satchel strapped to her waist, pulling a small bundle of dark hair tied by a silver ribbon. She thanks whatever God might be listening that her teacher – rest in peace, Donno-sensei – taught her how to do this._

_As her magic races to heal the wound left behind by the poisoned barb, she scoops up blood with the hair-bundle and waits. Soon, a man appears at the mouth of the alley, eyes dilated, mouth slightly slack. The fear rages in her blood, but so does anger and shame._

_“You killed the son of a God, bitch,” he slurs, eyes alight with madness and lust, fingers gripping the air as though he’s gouging bruises into her flesh._

_“Your child was a monster,” she hisses, remembering days of being fat, bloated, the thing that gestated in her belly, sucking reams of magic from her as she screamed in the night, chained to her bed by slavishly adoring men and women who stroked her belly. “And you are no God.”_

_His eyes burn as his humanity is wrenched from him and he loses control of his body to the thing that lives within. He lets out this feral shrieking noise. She can see the Daemon that lives beneath his skin, with coal-green skin and eyes that flicker like the heart of dying fires, disjointed limbs and a gaping mouth filled with teeth._

_“YoU wIll sUbmit…” It whispers to her, smiling almost charismatically, leering through the flesh sack it took as a disguise._

_“Sanguinem igni!” She screams in reply, tossing the blood-soaked bundle of hair at him, followed by a magical sign sketched in the air with fire. She closes her eyes as a blaze of light rocks the alley, and the thing screams as the blood fire scooped from her veins slowly incinerates it._

_She turns, eyes still closed, and runs for her life for the umpteenth time since she landed on this in this wretched world._

* * *

_She is standing in an immense clearing, drenched in blood. Her fingers shake with fear and pain. Her magic is so low, so drained from days of torture and feedings by those…those **monsters** that she doesn’t know if she can fight the scouts that have come for her._

_But she must._

_There is a wolf standing beside her, tall and silver-furred, pressing its immense flank against her side, sending warmth and strength through her bones._

_“Are you ready?” she asks the wolf in a voice strong and hard and spiced at the edges with an accent from the Deep South. The wolf looks up at her and nods._

_Her teachers have told her that in the first few weeks of becoming a Familiar, it took animals and spirits a long while to be able to communicate verbally, but that was okay._ _She had pulled the wolf from her very heart, after all._

_I_ _t is as though a part of her soul that she hadn’t even known was lost had been returned, and that she is whole._

_She will never go back. Not to the castles of those monsters, where only pain and torture and a long, drawn out death awaits. She shudders and the air shudders with her._

_She has never been the strong one. She is small and slim and weak – a weakling, her father always said – even with the training from her teachers._

_But she will be strong now, and she will find her friends. She knows they’re out there, that they were brought to this crazy world like her._

_Chittering, awful noises come from the woods surrounding her and fear fills her heart and lungs._

_“mAgUs BlOoD…” something that could never be called human whispers in the tree line._

_And the earth shakes beneath her feet._

* * *

_The pain has faded away to a dull, throbbing pulse radiating through her bones. Her knees aches with cold from hours spent kneeling on the stone floor, weighed down by the hundreds of fine-linked, dark red chains that burn deeply into her dark skin whenever she dares to do more than breathe._

_There is a fierce clanging on the metal bars of the dungeon’s door. She doesn’t bother to look up, lost in the faces of a family she has not seen in so long, of a friend she had lost, and a man she loves._

_“Ey, Magus bitch!” One of the guards assigned to watch her says, ugly hate and an even uglier leer in his voice. “Wake the fuck up, you’re going to see the Council.”_

_“Enough.” The new voice makes her freeze from shock and slowly, slowly she raises her head as the cage door opens and a man wearing a Marine’s long, white coat over her shoulders – a man she knows very, very well, from both this life and the one before – steps inside, the top of his head brushing the ceiling of her tiny cage._

_Somehow, she finds the strength to speak, even with her throat as dry and cracked as it had become._

_“Y…you f…ucking…traitor…” she gasps out._

_“I was thrown out,” the man says._

_“Shheee…she cried…o…over you…”_

_The man’s eyes are cold._

_“And since she made you her heir, I doubt she was too heartbroken.”_

_If she had the strength she would have snarled._

_“Y…you…wer…her son…sh…ee…loved you…Kuzan,” she whispers._

_The Admiral doesn’t respond, only beckons to the men he’s brought with them, and she is dragged out into the blinding light beyond the walls that were the only thing she had known for months…_

* * *

_They think she’s an ordinary slave. That her powers are the result of a Devil Fruit. She is prized, prized for her power and her muscles and her purple eyes. Her ‘masters” are very, very fond of her._

_She keeps her head down, takes the beatings and other horrors her “masters” dole out, and waits – patiently, she is good at being patient – for her chance to strike. If it had just been her, she could have escaped months ago. But she can’t help the sympathy that has grown within her for the rest of these trodden down, almost broken people. She will help them escape too._

_And she plans._

_She thanks God that Isono didn’t just teach her control of her Magic, but how to survive in a world full of people like the Tennryubito – how to smile submissively out of one side of her mouth while plotting death and destruction with the other. It’s ironic, that the half-breed Isono – daughter of a filthy Daemon and the Magus he raped to death – taught her more than proper magus teachers ever could._

_She thinks about a girl with dark eyes and a mastery for stage craft, thinks about the girl who taught her everything she knows about acting, and she thinks that she would have been very proud of her student, with how easily she plays the fat fools._

_She plans and she schemes and she waits._

_The whip slices down, cracking into her unclothed back with vicious cruelty, splattering blood. She grits her teeth and lets the anger fester in her belly, cold and hard and bitter. Her magic is dormant, kept silent by her implacable will, but it waits too. She smiles in her own mind, and waits for the day she will let every ounce of her anger turn loose upon her captors._

_In this life – and the one before – she knows well the name Tiger Fisher, and the destruction he wrought upon the cursed Mariejois._

_But she will not be as merciful as him. She will only stop her vengeance once the streets run red with the blood of the corrupted, and the whole world realizes their folly in protecting these monsters in human skin._

_And may the Gods have mercy on whoever tries to get in her way._

* * *

_The world burns. She almost trips over her own feet, the screams of the dead and the dying in her ears, but she keeps upright and herds the children towards the lifeboats as fast as she can, forcing herself to focus only on the boat waiting ahead and the women who are already on it._

_She will not think about the all too real possibility that only she, the children, and the fifty or so on the boat will be only the only ones who will survive this night, only a hundred people out of a population of a thousand who have any chance of living until sunrise, and that sparse chance is slowly decreasing by each minute._

_She hears a shriek behind her, a sound no human could ever make, and she will have a panic attack later, when she does not have almost twenty younglings to protect._

_“To the ship!” she screams. “Run, run, run!” The children pick up the pace, the eldest ones hauling the stragglers into their arms and racing to the women on the ship who hold out their arms, yelling encouragements._

_She flings the first child onto the ship, into a dark-skinned woman’s arms, and repeats the gesture over and over again, not caring about where the children land, as long as they are on the ship, as long as they have some sort of safety. It is only when the ship is full, she leaps back onto the beach, signaling to the Sea Kings who will take the ship somewhere safe._

_“Where the hell are you going?” A man with wild green hair and fur on his neck roars at her as the ship pulls out into deeper ocean, his panicked voice bracketed by the cries of the children and others on board._

_She does not reply, only sends a mental order to the Kings to get as far away from the island as possible and she turns just in time to see a_ thing _erupt from the woods. Legs fifteen feet tall support a squat brown body with a mouth that takes up more than half of the thing’s torso._

_It screeches to see its prey vanish, mouth full of bloody teeth and the remains of her friends and family, and it focuses its fury on her. Her brown eyes narrow with rage and her belly tenses with fear._

_And she does not know if she will survive the night._

* * *

_She does not know who she is. Her Master says she is one person, the Head Magus of his Family, and his lover, the mother of his beloved son, whom he rescued after her family died. He curls his fingers in her light red hair and pulls her close, kissing her as though he will never let her go._

_She is not stupid enough to tell him about the dreams, about the dreams where she is more than just the one she is now. She is smart enough to realize that for all his caresses and soft words and burning passion, she still wears a collar about her neck and her wrists, a collar that binds every ounce of her to him, a collar that does not permit disobedience, even in her dreams._

_And something snarls in her chest, rumbling in discontent like her Magic does when her Master uses it for his own ends, uses it to strike fear into the hearts of his enemies. He does not permit her to find anything about the family she lost, and his eyes flash menacingly when she dares to push the subject too far._

_She sits upon the highest point of the castle she lives in with her Master’s Family, and looks out over a city sprawled wide, a city she knows as well as she knows her own heart, and something aches in her chest._

_A voice whispers “Mistress?” A scaly head pushes itself underneath her hand and tucks itself by her side._

_“I had another dream,” she says._

_Another dream where there is no collar on her neck and wrists, another dream where she is sister and daughter and mother and wife, another dream where she lived in a world beyond this with a man and woman who took her from the streets and made her their own and the dark-eyed sister/brother who welcomes her with open arms, another dream where the restless anger and subconscious fury in her chest has been calmed by a dark haired man with a sword at his side, by the baby girl she holds in her arms._

_“I had another dream,” she says again, but tears burn in her eyes and a nameless, inarticulate longing fills her chest until she could scream from the frustration and anguish._

_She does not know who she is, and how she wishes she did._

_The moon casts its silvery light upon the opulently decadent city where her Master is beloved by all, where she is treated as a Queen, but is – in reality - nothing more than a gilded cage, where not even her Magic is allowed to be free._

_She weeps into her hands and knows she will never be free._

* * *

Kelly Lewis jerked from sleep with a gasp of shock, knocking Gin off the bed and Shere into the wall as she flailed for balance and comprehension.

She stared blankly up at the wooden ceiling of her room in the Going Merry, chest heaving, her hair sweat-soaked and sticking to her skin. She breathed in and out as slowly as she could manage.

“Mistress?” Gin asked, pulling himself back onto the bed, while Shere clambered under Kelly’s arm and snuggled in her lap, looking just as worried as her male counterpart. “Mistress, was it another nightmare?”

Kelly, still breathing slowly, mind desperately trying to right itself in reality, placed her hands on her face, her hips, her belly, and her legs. She drew back the sleeve of the tunic she slept in, and ran her fingers over the silver-blue scales on the outside of her arm.

“Mama?” Shere asked, placing one paw on the Magus’s chest. “Mama, what’s wrong?”

Kelly curled her fingers through Shere’s fur, and did the same for Gin with her other hand, pulling him against her bare thigh. There was silence for a few moments, the Familiars waiting on tenterhooks for their Mistress to speak.

Then Kelly leaned back against the headboard with a sigh.

“Nightmare,” she confirmed. But something in her face kept Gin from going for the Dreamless Sleep potions in the Infinity Sack just yet. She sighed again and wiped the sweat from her eyes.

“Nightmare _s_ ,” she corrected herself quietly. “I had nightmare _s_ …but they…” she stopped, feeling for the words as though she was trying to convince herself of the words. “I had nightmares, but they weren’t… _mine_.” She looked frankly bewildered by the idea.

Gin went still.

“Why would I have nightmares that didn’t belong to me?” Kelly said, the question aimed more at herself, even as exhaustion made her words slur and her eyes close, and she dropped back into sleep.

Gin pressed a human hand to her forehead and whispered a few words, sparkles of silver light into vanishing behind the Magus’s closed eyes. The woman went limp completely after the sparkles vanished, her mouth slack, her head lolling, completely relaxed in a way she hadn’t been able to afford to be since Toratega.

“Gin!” Shere hissed. “What are you doing-?”

He gave her a foreboding look.

“She needs her sleep. So do you, Shere Khan.”

“But-!”

He sent her another glare, this one so fearsome it froze the protest in her throat.

“ _Sleep_.”

* * *

The moon was full, blinding in its blaze of light.

Gin curled up on the railing of the ship, watching the sea with cold eyes. If he had been able to find a private place he would have indulged in a furious temper fit, but there were no places on this ship where one could be truly by themselves.

So he contented himself with glaring at the water lapping at the sides of the ship’s hull.

Things were happening too fast for his comfort, and too soon. How many others had been brought here? How many more lives would She ruin?

The Gods only knew how badly She had ruined his Mistress's life so far.

Gin sighed, and stared up at the moon.

"What is the meaning of all of this?" He asked the sphere of light. "What plans does fate have for us? And for my Mistress?"

The moon did not answer. It never did.


	10. Snow (Hey Oh)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More teasing, and Kelly cares for a deathly ill Nami.

* * *

**DATE:** _Fuck, I don’t know. Monday? I think? It’s early, though. The sun’s barely over the horizon_

**MY LOCATION:** _The Grand Line (Gods, that’s so weird to write!)_

**PLACE:** _My room, the Going Merry (and that’s even_ weirder _to write)_

 

_So what comes next is Nami’s illness, and getting Chopper as a doctor for the ship._

_Not looking forward to it. Illnesses fucking suck, man. I remember when Nee-chan_

_…_

_Never mind._

_Anyway, yesterday I got this drawing from Usopp_

_…_

_I can’t_

_I can’t do this_

_I don’t want to remember_

_fuck_

_…_

_God damn it, **pull it together**._

_~KL_

(Below the word “Usopp”, there is a picture of aforementioned sniper with his slingshot in hand, his dark hair wildly curly, and his eyes narrowed on some target in the distance. And below the word “Nee-chan” is yet another picture, this one of a woman with a close-cropped head of light red, almost pink hair, and an amused smile, a pair of over-large headphones wrapped around her neck.)

* * *

“GET _OUT_.”

Kelly laughed as she danced back through the kitchen doors and onto the deck, dodging with inches to spare the shiny loafer that cut through the air where her head had been just seconds before.

She widened her lips into a girlish pout as the Straw Hats’ cook stormed out after her, fire in his eyes and a spatula in his right hand.

“Che, cook-san, why’re you so angry? It’s the _truth_ , after all,” Kelly said, restraining the urge to giggle as spots of red rose in his cheeks.

“YOU-YOU- _YOU_ -” He spluttered, hands curled into fists, knuckles white.

“I mean, all I was saying was that you’re a pathetic little puppy trying to beg attention from women who are clearly so far out of your league it’s a little ridiculous!” Kelly said with a nasty smile. “I mean, think about it, cook-san. It’s not what you would call _inaccurate_ , after all. That’s all you really are, right?”

As long as she lived, Kelly would never forget the look that crossed Sanji’s face at her words. There was fury, yes, and a decent helping of “I WILL END YOU NOW” along with it, but there was…

There was pain, too.

His lips were tight, a thin line that trembled slightly and his eyes shone with some dark emotion. She’d seen that look on her own face ( _too_ many damn times), back in her previous life, when the bullies got too much to deal with. Her tormentors had known exactly how to make their words hurt, too.

Something deep inside her was screaming _What the fuck are you_ doing _?! Remember, we like this guy and we want him to like us. Pissing him off is fine, but this…This is just fucking_ wrong _, god damn it. This isn’t us._

But something even deeper than that, something so deep that she was barely cognizant of the words forming, whispered sadly _But he can’t like us. Not now, not ever. We’re monsters, freaks of nature. We have to be cruel to keep him away. If he ever got close enough to us like we want, if we ever cared about him like we did for Alex, for Beth, for Henry or Lien, for_ Mina _, and he found out about what we are? ...He would turn on us, try to kill us, sell us. They always do._

_And even if he did like us, we’d only get him killed in the end._

Kelly bit the inside of her cheek and fought to keep the sly, upturned curve on her lips.

“Darling, are you _jealous_ of me?” she asked instead, properly incredulous. “I mean, I know I’m twice the man you could ever be-”

“DIE.” The familiar anger jumped back into his eyes and he launched himself forward. Kelly stepped out of the way, making it appear like she was just barely gliding around each devastating kick. Kelly knew that Sanji was an extraordinary fighter and would only become _more_ so, but the ease with which she could dodge his attacks was bordering on ridiculous.

But then again, she’d spent almost the entirety of the last decade running and fighting for her life against monsters that were (at _least_ ) on Vice-Admiral levels, so perhaps it wasn’t that weird.

She mentally shook herself. Why was she angsting when she had a furious Sanji trying to knock her block off right in front of her? Christ Almighty, was she an _idiot_ or something? Why wasn’t she taking her chance to make those gorgeous blue eyes darken with pain?

She stepped into Sanji’s guard and slammed as brutal a punch as she could manage (but one that wouldn’t break him in half) into his stomach, folding the blond cook almost in half over her fist, expelling the air from his lungs in a painful gasp. She quickly hooked a leg around his and yanked, dropping him to the deck.

Then a thoroughly evil smile curved her lips for the briefest of moments and before she could talk herself out of it, she straddled the blond man and leaned in close. His eyes widened as she rested each elbow on either side of his head.

“This is cozy,” she commented idly, smiling nonchalantly as Sanji froze.

“Wha-wha-wha- _what_ _the_ hell _are you doing, you shitty bastard?!_ ” He screeched, his voice rising almost to a falsetto from the shock.

Kelly mentally sniggered, and tried for a simper. She didn’t know if it worked, but by the equal parts revolted and – hilariously – aroused look that scrabbled across Sanji’s face, it certainly did _something_.

“You know, Sanji- _kyun_ ,” she simpered, pursing her lips in a pout. “There’s something I always wanted to tell you.”

The blond man immediately began squirming, trying to get out from underneath her, but she slipped her legs in between his, spreading them wide and keeping them still. His hands curled into fists, but before he could do anything else, she pressed the pressure points on his shoulder, preventing him from moving his arms.

His eyes practically bulged out of his head as she smiled at him.

“Sanji _-kyun_ ,” she said, resting her arms on either side of his head. “I _really_ do have to tell you this. It’s so _very_ important, you know.”

Sanji now looked both morbidly curious and revolted, and a very pronounced twitch had taken up residence below his left eye.

“Oh Sanji- _kyun_ , why won’t you just listen to me? It really is _important-_ ”

“ _Just tell me what the hell you want, you shitty pervert, and get off me!_ ”

Kelly leaned back, tsking at the volume his screech had risen to. “So impatient.”

The twitch was even more pronounced now, making Sanji’s face appear as though it had contracted a rather severe case of Tourette’s.

“ _What the fuck do you_ want _, god damn it?!”_

Kelly leaned in close again, so their lips were barely an inch apart, making sure she had a serious a face as she could manage with the mad laughter that was erupting from within her head.

“Sanji, I just wanted to say…”

She leaned towards his ear and breathed hotly over it, insanely delighted to feel a shiver wrack his body.

“I just wanted to say…”

_‘Wait for it…’_

His body stiffened in involuntary anticipation.

_‘Wait for iiiiiiiiiit…’_

“Your food’s burning,” she said, and pulled back to watch the show.

His face was frozen, a light dusting of red over his cheeks as her words sank into his brain. Then his face changed colors so fast it was like watching an Everlasting Gobstopper melt in super-fast forward.

“YOU SHITTY FUCKTARD!” He roared. Kelly let the man throw her off, cackling as he raced back through the doors of the kitchen. The faint odor of burnt food drifted out and Kelly clung to the railing, weak with laughter.

‘ _I’m so going to pay for that,’_ she thought, clutching her sides as she roared. _‘But it was so very, very worth it.’_

* * *

**DATE:** _Concerning the end of events on Little Garden_

**MY LOCATION:**

**PLACE:**

_Those giants were fucking **Bad. Ass.**_

_Jesus Christ, them cutting that ginormous hole in that freaky, over-sized goldfish was a thing of beauty, I’ll tell you._

_…_

_So, things were all right, in the end. (Well, not all right, but everything was okay.) The crew knows about some of my martial arts abilities and I admitted to it regularly enough when Luffy asked – with stars in his eyes – about what I was doing._

_It was kind of annoying, but really it’s not that unexpected, that my skills would have come out like this. I mean, if it wasn’t for the events that’re upcoming, then my blossoming “rivalry” (and the fact that I so clearly outclass him) with that blond dumbass certainly would have revealed my fighting abilities._

_And really, that’s not important, in the scheme of things. I could afford to reveal parts of my Rokushiki. There are three other things I **have** to keep secret._

_My gender, my…Snake-y bits, and my Magic._

_It’s going to be hard enough as it is to keep those a secret._

_~KL_

* * *

Kelly yawned from where she sat – next to Vivi, who was looking out at the ocean with distant eyes - combing her fingers through Shere Khan’s fur. It was a wonderful day, with an almost obscenely cheerful blue sky, dotted with tiny puffs of white cloud.

But Kelly kept her eyes on Nami, who was staring down at her legs, breathing unsteadily. Her cheeks were a ruddy red color, and sweat turned the hair at the back of her neck to a burnt umber. And the _stench_ …Almighty God, it was horrendous, the sickly sweet, wretchedly familiar, rotting smell of the ill.

The Magus was grateful she could numb her own senses when she needed to. It was hard enough as it was not to gag.

Kelly noticed Nami start to tilt to the side, and mentally swore.

“Vivi…I’m sorry, but can you watch our h-heading? I’m going to my room,” Nami said, trembling slightly.

“Of course, Nami-san,” Vivi said, smiling. “Get some rest.”

Nami pushed off from mast, and tried to take a step, but just dropped like a sack of potatoes to the deck. Vivi gasped.

“Nami-san!” she quickly hurried over to the fallen navigator. Vivi hissed as she put her hand to Nami’s head and quickly yanked it away.

“Like an open flame,” Vivi whispered, before raising her voice to a shout. “Everyone, come quick! We have a problem!”

The door to the kitchen opened, and Kelly heard Luffy ask what was going on.

“Nami-san has a terribly high fever,” the princess told them, and Sanji’s reaction was typical, if stupidly melodramatic. Kelly rolled her eyes as the blond man nearly knocked the rest of his cremates over so he could flutter his hands over the downed navigator. The rest of the Straw Hats gathered around their fallen crewmate, looking at her.

Finally Kelly got annoyed by the fact that no one was doing anything, and shooed Shere Khan off her lap. She stood and made her way over to them.

“Move, ya idjits,” she ordered, elbowing Luffy in the side. She scooped Nami into her arms as gently as she could, and stood again, letting the navigator’s cheek rest against her shoulder. Her eyebrows raised in shock at the amount of heat the poor girl was giving off.

“Fucking hell,” she whispered, and turned to Usopp and Luffy. “Yo, Usopp, I need a large basin full of ice cold water, and a smaller bowl full of thin ice chips. Along with that, I need several towels and a large bucket. Straw Hat, you help him out _._ ”

The sniper leapt up. “O-of course!” he said, and quickly hurried into the back of the ship, pulling Luffy along with him. With that done, Kelly turned to Vivi.

“Princess, you come with me. Roronoa, keep an eye on our heading. Don’t fucking touch anything, ‘cause I’ve heard stories about how bad you are at directions, but just make sure we’re traveling in a straight line, and sound the alarm if anything happens.”

Zoro nodded and left in the direction of the upper deck. Kelly winced, and turned to Vivi. “Vivi, you’ll be helping me a lot, but check on him occasionally to make sure he doesn’t get us lost, okay? That’s the absolute _last_ thing we need right now.”

Vivi grinned and nodded.

“All right then, show me where Nami’s room, then. Ah, cook,” Kelly stopped and turned back to Sanji, only to take a step back when he practically teleported in front of her.

“Where do you think you’re going with Nami-san?” he hissed at her.

Kelly rolled her eyes. “I’m taking her to her room, dumbass, so she can rest. I need you to-”

“Bull _shit_ ,” he hissed. “You couldn’t care about someone if you tried, you fucking _abomination_. All you want is to molest her.”

Vivi gasped in shock.

The force of those words was like a blow to the stomach. Kelly fought to keep her face neutral as she looked at Sanji squarely in the face and tried to wrangle her voice under control. She knew she’d regret the incident this morning, but _Jesus_ fucking _Christ_ , she didn’t think Sanji had this sort of shit in him _._

“If you’re so concerned about Nami’s virtue in my presence, you needn’t be worried,” Kelly finally managed to get out, the words as flat and monotone as she could make them. She’d always been so good at hiding the hurt before – why was it so difficult now? “I’m not so desperate for a lay that I’d have my way with a _deathly ill_ woman. Could you make some chicken soup or broth of any kind? The fever’s going to dehydrate her rapidly.” She turned around and looked at Vivi, and there must have been something truly awful in her face, because the princess’s eyes went wide with shock.

Kelly swallowed the ball of fiery tears that had condensed into a hard knot at the back of her neck and nodded to the princess. “Show me to Nami’s room, please.”

* * *

_-…The villagers stare at her, strange looks in their eyes, and it has every hair on the back of her neck standing straight up. She walks into the first available shop, where hopefully she can charter a ship to get her somewhere near the Grand Line – she has money now and everything!_

_The owner of the fishing store – Gerrant, it said on the sign outside – is a shorter, elderly man, with white wisps of hair curling over a mostly bald dome. There are deep wrinkles carved into his face by both time’s inexorable passage and a great deal of laughter, and he reminds her so much of her paternal grandfather it hurts._

_She’d never been close to her maternal grandparents – strict, traditionally racist Southern fuckwads who didn’t approve of their only granddaughter “associating” with a “Negro wench” and the illegitimate child of a “Ruskie” – but she’d loved Ezekiel and Ursula Lewis for the short time she’d had them. She can still taste the red gumdrops her Papaw used to sneak her under the table before dinner, and she can still smell the spicy cinnamon that cloaked her Mamaw after she spent the morning crafting the best Thanksgiving feast this side of the Atlantic._

_“Um…excuse me?” she says, and the man looks up from the newspaper with a smile on his lips._

_“Ah, a cust-” Then he stops, and just stares at her like the villagers did, and something very dark and very awful passes over his face so quick she takes a reflexive step back._

_“Um, um, sir, I was wondering if I could charter a boat to the next island,” Kelly asks timidly, feeling goosebumps rise on her arms. Something inside her is **screaming**_ _run, run, run! “I-I have money.”_

_“I won’t have any truck with your kind,” he spits out, and Kelly blinks at the sheer vitriol in the man’s voice._

_“Excuse me? Sir, I don’t-” She just barely dodges the beer bottle he throws at her, and it crashes against the wall, spilling beer and sending glass everywhere. She stares at the stain on the wall for a few seconds, uncomprehending, and turns back to the man._

_“Dumb as a fish,” he snorts and stands up. “Get the fuck out of my shop, you fucking freak, and go back to the sea where you belong. Your kind doesn’t belong with humans.”_

_Kelly can’t believe what she is hearing, and looks down at arms, only to blanch in shock at the sight of the outsides of her arms lightly covered in soft silver scales. They hadn’t been that big yesterday!_

_She starts to babble something, anything but is interrupted when a hand grabs the back of her shirt and hauls her up, her feet leaving the ground._

_“Having problems, Gerrant?” A man’s voice says behind her._

_“Get that animal out of my shop, or I’ll sell it to the World Government,” Gerrant snaps. “I know you don’t approve of slavery, Jossik, but it really is the only way to deal with these…_ things _.”_

_There is a sigh from the man holding her up. “I’ll take care of it.” Kelly is sat back on her feet, and then there is a large, warm hand pressing against the small of her back, propelling her out the door._

_But she hears the last word the man says before she leaves the shop, and something hard lodges itself in her throat._

_“Abomination of nature…” the man is saying with hate in his voice, and Kelly realizes then that she’s not going to have an easy time at all in this fucked up world she’s landed in…-_

* * *

Kelly could feel Vivi, Sanji, and Carue’s eyes on her back as she worked, diligently mopping up sweat, spooning chicken broth and water into the shaking navigator’s mouth, holding back Nami’s hair when she retched helplessly into the bucket Usopp had fetched, keeping cold compresses on the weaker girl’s fevered forehead, crooning softly all the while. Shere Khan curled up on the pillows next to Nami, and Gin was on the other side.

They’d managed to power through the storm they would have run straight into if Nami hadn’t managed to turn the ship around, and Vivi had asked them all the find a doctor for Nami as quickly as possible, so then they could travel to Arabasta and save her people. The crew had been happy with Vivi’s selflessness, and had agreed.

Kelly had seen the enormous cyclone Nami had managed to save them from, and had realized it then.

_Nami was a Magus._

It was physically _impossible_ , even on the Grand Line, for a human to have such sensitivity for the emotions and moods of the ocean.

It was possible that Nami was just strong for a human, but Kelly knew it wasn’t that.

Nami had realized the storm was coming before even _Kelly_ had. That should have been impossible, but it had happened. The fondness Gin and Shere had for the orange-haired woman was even more confirmation towards that, as Familiar(s) were generally a lot fonder of other Magi than they were of humans or other races, especially if the Magus in question was of the same element as the Familiar(s)’ master.

Kelly felt herself smile involuntarily, gently smoothing out the blankets that covered the navigator and sitting back as the girl dropped into a hazy, semi-restless sleep.

Something inside of her was crying with joy. _We’re not alone!_ It was saying. _Thank the Gods, we’re not alone!_

* * *

Kelly hadn’t gone outside with Vivi to check on the others during the interlude with Wapol. They could handle themselves, and Nami needed her more.

She turned the sodden rag over so the cooler side lay against Nami’s forehead.

Picking up the sick bucket so she could go empty it, she stopped as a soft, trembly voice spoke up from behind her.

“Ciel?” She immediately set the bucket back down and dropped to her knees beside Nami.

“D’you need something, Nami-chan?” she asked, her voice low and soothing.

“W-Why…Why are you doing this…for me?” the ruddy-cheeked woman asked. “You’re not even a member of this ship, why are you doing this for me?”

Kelly paused, and leaned back. “Because…” she began, and the words strangled in her throat and Nami looked so tired, so confused _-…Nee-chan’s hair is matted to her face by sweat, and Kelly wipes it away, and whispered quietly “Cause you’re my sister, Amber, and I love you bunches,” and she tries not to see how gray and thin the older woman has become…-_ and Kelly sighed, pressing Nami back against the pillows.

“Sleep, Nami-chan. I’ll take care of you.”

* * *

She had a point to make.

Kelly knew she’d crossed a line this morning with Sanji which had led to him lashing out this afternoon, and while she understood that, some things had to be addressed _immediately_.

She cornered the cook in the kitchen as he was making some broth for Nami’s dinner. He’d eyed her warily.

The Magus sighed. “I came to apologize,” she told him, and fought the urge to laugh tiredly as his jaw dropped. “I said some things I regret. I’m not usually such a vicious bully, but sometimes I take a joke too far. I do regret some of the nastier things I said you this morning, and I am sorry for them.”

She squared her stance. “But that’s all I’m going to apologize for. I know you care about your crewmates, so I understand, and you’re a chivalrous man, so I respect your concern for them both. But I would never molest a **_dying woman_**. Nami is perhaps the one person on this ship I can say, without a shred of hesitation, that I like the most, that I _care for_ the most, and that disgusting insinuation you made this afternoon was an insult to us both.”

Kelly kept her eyes on Sanji’s, her voice calm, and the insults away from her speech. She was here to make a point, not get in a fight.

“Nami is a beautiful woman, as is Vivi. I am not dead, so yes, I’ve noticed that. But I have all the respect in the world for them both, and would never do anything to them unless I had their _complete and wholehearted consent._ And Nami…” the words faltered in her throat. She hadn’t wanted to give the Straw Hats anything of her old life, especially not of Nee-chan, but she knew she had to.

“I had a sister,” she told him, as honestly as she could. “I had a sister, and I loved her very much. Nami is much like her.”

Something soft gentled the hard, wary lines around Sanji’s eyes. “What happened to her?” he asked, just as simply as her words had been.

“I lost her to illness.” The words hurt. They hurt so much, like knives in her throat, but Kelly let them come. This was no longer about gaining Sanji’s trust anymore. “I watched her waste away for days after the doctors tried everything they could to save her and failed. I watched her grow thinner and thinner every day, starving no matter how much food I tried to give her, even with IVs in her arms. She died in my arms, not even realizing who I was at the end.”

Kelly rubbed a hand over her face. “Do you know what it’s like, to watch someone you love waste away to nothing and know you can do nothing to stop it? And I’m watching this happen all over again with Nami-” She closed her mouth and sighed.

“That’s all I wanted to say.” She turned and walked out the door, heading back to her room as quickly as she could move without it seeming like she was running away.

Because she wasn’t.

Really.


	11. Like Muhammad to the Mountain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kelly comes face to face with a secret from her past on Drum Island.

* * *

Kelly refused to go outside when they reached Drum Island, knowing just how badly she would react when Vivi would be shot by the paranoid villagers, and asked Zoro to let her know when they were disembarking instead.

So she stayed inside with Nami, writing down things of her old life she wanted to remember in her journal, so she would never forget. Her father’s recipes, the folk stories her mother told. The way the city sparkled at night, a thousand specks of star light illuminating a city that never slept. Her sister’s laugh. The taste of her favorite foods. How Beth drew flawless sound from any instrument she touched, the deep, resonating baritone of Alex, and the way the three of their voices flowed together through song after song after song.

She doodled some scribbles in the margins of the paper, until the door opened and Zoro came inside.

“C’mon, let’s go,” he said. “We’ve found a doctor.”

* * *

Unlike the time at Whisky Peak, Shere Khan and Gin were more than happy to stay behind as Kelly bundled up for the trip (and the tortuous hike up the mountain that was to come), secured her Sack to her waist and quickly hurried out.

Zoro helped get Nami onto her back, and Kelly was only slightly reassured by the weak squeeze the orange haired woman gave when her arms curled around Kelly’s neck. The heat that radiated from Nami left trickles of sweat running down Kelly’s back, but she simply shrugged off the discomfort and firmed her grip on the woman's legs.

Kelly’s first impression of Drum Island was that it was _damn cold_. She was not a fan of the cold. It made her feel sluggish and stupidly sleepy. Luckily the magic woven into her underclothing quickly activated and warmed her up.

 _‘Magic really is awesome,’_ she thought as they trudged through the knee-high snow towards the village.

Then something occurred to her.

Sanji hadn’t made a fuss about her carrying Nami.

She looked to her side, where the man in question walked on the other side of Usopp, and blinked when she found his eyes on her. Sanji stiffened when she raised an eyebrow at him, and looked hurriedly away, the very tips of his ears turning red.

Both eyebrows shot well into her hairline.

What was all _that_ about?

* * *

Bighorn could have been any small European town high in the mountains, perhaps in the Alps, but Kelly was willing to bet that no European town had ever been host to such strange animals. She watched the enormous, white-furred, water buffalo/hippo thing walk by with restrained amusement, much as she had watched the hiking bear.

‘ _This really is a different world_ ,’ she thought for the umpteenth time. _‘This could be any ordinary town on Earth, until you see one of these things walk by_.’

One of the white bison things, its legs extended to their full growth and not hunched in the snow, strode by, laden down with packages.

She sighed and gently squeezed Nami’s legs as Dalton dismissed his people.

“We’ve made it to the village, Nami-chan,” she whispered, trying to send faint tendrils of magic through Nami’s body, to ease her suffering. But all the orange haired woman could say in reply to Kelly’s words was a faint mumble of barely cohesive words.

Kelly’s lips thinned.

She’d been trying to use her magic to break through the illness, but its hold was strong on the fledgling Magus. Had this been the keschia virus Kureha had saved Nami from in the manga? Or was it something worse, something brought on by her exposure to Kelly?

She looked towards the mountain in the distance. _‘Let Kureha and Chopper be miracle workers,_ ’ she prayed, eyes fluttering closed, and the words silent on her lips. _‘Let them save my anistaka.’_

Kelly had no idea what that word meant, but it came from her heart, and it fit.

 _Anistaka,_ a voice whispered in her head, like moonchimes on the edge of her conscious mind. _Dear one, precious jewel, friend of my heart. Sister in all the eyes of Magic._

She turned her attention to Dalton as he waved off the old man’s cheerful greeting and promise to vote for him in the election.

“No,” Dalton said gently. “Do not vote for me, I am a man of too many sins.”

Kelly could have laughed at the irony. _‘I am many years younger, Dalton,_ ’ she thought, placing the muscled, dark-haired man at around his early 40s. _‘I am many years younger, but in a hundred years your list of sins could never hope to match mine. You’d make a great leader. You care for your people as Wapol never did, and what mistakes you’ve made, you’ve sought to atone. Most men wouldn’t do such a thing. Most **humans** would never do such a thing.’_

She’d always liked Dalton before. It was nice to know that he was as good a man in real life as he seemed to be in the manga.

He opened the door to the small house, and called out something that surprised the hell out of Kelly.

“My love? I’ve brought you guests!”

Kelly blinked. _‘What the hell?’_

Then a voice – a voice that froze the blood in Kelly’s veins, because it was a voice she heard in some of her worst nightmares – replied with a merry laugh. “Guests, Dalton? Why do you never inform me of these things ahead of time, you daft man?” It was a warm voice, soft and smooth, naturally maternal and quietly feminine. And the presence Kelly now sensed made bile surge in her belly. She hadn’t noticed it, because her attention and Magic had been focused on Nami.

A woman opened a door near to the fireplace and carefully walked out, resting a hand on the wall as she moved towards them, bringing with her the faint scent of growing things and a subtle aura of power Kelly knew she was the only one who would be able to sense. At her side prowled a bear, steadying the woman as she walked. Dalton’s entire face just lit from the inside out, and he met her halfway, cupping her warm brown face in his hands and kissing her softly. He pulled away and turned back to them.

“I would like you to meet my wife, Sara,” he said, and it was impossible to describe the love in his words.

The bile and guilt churned in Kelly’s belly until she was afraid she would be sick, her attention riveted on the lovely woman. She was short, no more than 5”2 in height, with thick curves, golden brown skin, and sleek black hair cropped short around her face. She wore a floor-length, thick flannel dress over a white turtleneck, fluffy red slippers, and her hands gently cradled the growing mound below her substantial bust.

Kelly breathed slowly, trying to halt the choking noise threatening to burst free. Sara’s eyes had always been beautiful, the color of the green grass after rain. But she could see them no longer.

Sara’s eyes were now covered by a thick, ugly scar that cut lengthwise through them both. A scar that could have only come from a slaver’s – or master’s – cruel knife.

The Magus shuddered _-“Don’t leave me! Don’t leave me!” screams out from behind her, but she keeps running, like the cowardly dog she is, because she can’t go back, **won’t** go back to that hellhole-_ and turned away, biting her lip.

“You can use this bed,” Dalton said, and pointed. Vivi helped Kelly lower Nami onto the bed and cover her up. Kelly sat on the opposite side of Vivi, putting most of the bed in between herself and the blind woman who stood by the crackling fire with Dalton’s arm wrapped around her shoulders.

“Tell my husband what has brought you here while I check on your ill friend,” the woman said to Vivi, moving towards the bed with careful steps.

Vivi explained about what they had come to here to do, and that Nami’s temperature had risen considerably in the past days, but Kelly heard none of it. All she was conscious of was the blind Magus checking Nami’s pulse, resting a callused hand on her forehead, and doing what she could.

Once she paused, stopped, and her mouth curved just slightly, and tendrils of nearly-invisible magic began to trickle into Nami’s body, though the blind Magus soon stopped, looking puzzled at the resistance.

“All we have to do is wait for the next day when she comes down the mountain,” Dalton was saying, but Sara shook her head.

“My love, she will not survive that long,” the woman said gravely, catching the eye of all the Straw Hats, including Luffy and Usopp, who had come in after Sanji had demolished their snow creations.

Dalton turned to her. “Sara, the trip up the mountain-”

“-is dangerous, I realize this, but she must go _today_ ,” Sara said with force. “If she has any chance of surviving this night, it lies with Ageha, and only her. If you do not get her to the mountaintop tonight, your navigator will **_die_**.” She directed this last part at the Straw Hats, and Luffy in particular.

“Che…we can’t take Nami-swan up a mountain in her condition,” Sanji said, looking out the window. “And we don’t have the time to wait for that witch, either.”

As the Straw Hats worried, Sara turned her head to Kelly, stilling the breath in the taller woman’s lungs.

“You, come with me. I have some climbing boots and things that will make your ascent a bit easier to manage. You will help me gather them.”

The words strangling in her throat, Kelly nodded dumbly and followed the other Magus through the door into a large kitchen, and through yet another door into what appeared to be a bedroom. Sara ushered her in and shut the door behind her. The bear padded over the carpet in front of the shut window on the east wall and curled up there.

“You know…” the other Magus said quietly. “After our parting, I’m not expecting you to run into my arms, but could you at least speak to me, Kelly?”

“Sara,” Kelly choked out, the single word dragging over her throat like shards of broken glass. “Sara, I, I-”

The older Magus smiled sweetly and gently took the other’s hands. “There, that’s much better, isn’t it?”

-… _The first thing she knows is pain, and she slowly comes out of the drugged sleep to a soft hand rubbing the sweat and blood from her face. She cries out as she tries to sit up, and the same gentle hand presses her back to the ground._

_“Don’t,” a voice warns her. “They worked you over very badly, and the men here aren’t exactly too generous with the medical aid. Not for the unattractive women.”_

_She stops trying to rise and instead opens her eyes. She is in a small, dingy room, laying on what feels like a tiny, threadbare cot, and leaning over her is a woman with the most vivid green eyes she has ever seen in her entire life._

_The bruise that covered almost the entirety of the woman’s jaw on the right side does nothing to hide her warmth. Kelly turns her head to her side and sees a bunch of women – her age or older – with muscled limbs and faces that could never be termed “the epitome of beauty” sitting against the walls, eyeing the two of them avidly. She turns her head back to the woman._

_“Wh-where am I?” she whispers, her voice a raspy croak._

_The woman’s smile turns sad and her response sends a spike of terror down Kelly’s spine._

_“The slave cages, my dear. You’re a slave now.”…-_

Kelly felt the burn of tears at the back of her throat. “I’m so sorry…” she said, grinding the heels of her palms into her eyes. “Sara, Gods, I’m so sorry-”

Sara guided the taller woman to sit on one of the chairs below the closed window on the north side of the bedroom.

“Kelly, it’s all right,” she said firmly.

The tears came in a rush now. “N-no it’s not,” she cried out. “What I did, Sara, Gods…”

_-…She runs, Sara on her heels. “To the forest,” Sara says breathlessly. “We can lose them there-” The sharp crack of a gunshot cuts her words off and Kelly whirls, hearing Sara collapse to the ground. The smaller woman struggles to rise and looks up at Kelly with terrified eyes. “Help,” she whispers._

_Kelly sees the men approaching, eyes glinting and cheering “We got one of the bitches!” one of them cries, and tears begin to film Sara’s eyes. And Kelly almost doubles back to grab the woman._

_Almost._

_But the man at the head of the pack sees Kelly and lets out a shout. “The Snake!” He yells. “The Snake! Someone tell Zuri I’ve got the Snake.” Kelly’s mind blanks with fear, and in her future she sees nothing more than days of being stuffed into a cage two times too small for her, of public beatings and humiliation beyond reasoning, and the endless, mindless degradation of everything she was until she was sold. And beyond that she cannot think of the horrors awaiting her._

_The shame is endless, but the men are almost upon her, and all she has to do is make it to the ocean, where the sparrows say the whale sharks wait for her. She turns and she runs for her life._

_Sara’s screams and the men’s laughter will haunt her until the day she dies…-_

“It took me a long time to keep from getting angry,” Sara said and Kelly shuddered. “For the longest time I thought ‘why should I have to go back, if that stupid snake was allowed to be free?’”

Kelly jerked away as though she had been burned, but Sara kept her eyes on Kelly’s.

“I was so very, very angry at you. But you – in that short time you were there – had it much worse than I did. Even if none of the men…raped you…at the very least they never humiliated me like they did to you. At least, at the end of everything, I knew I was human. They could never take that from me.”

_-…“Look at it squirm!” One of the man calls as Kelly jerks out of the way before the gunshot crashes into her leg. She is as naked as the day she was born and whenever she gets too close to the men encircling her, they pinch her bottom or whatever skin is closest._

_She sees the bulges in their pants as she dodges the gunshots, hearing that damned accordion in the background, and tears track down her face._

_“Hey, maybe we should breed it!” One man calls, and nausea rolls in her belly at the smiles that cross the ghoulish faces surrounding her. But they aren’t supposed to find a stinking Snake – an animal – attractive._

_“We don’t wanna touch a fucking animal, Dai!” another voice calls back._

_“Hey, but didn’t the Captain say she wanted more Snakes, though?” Another man yells excitedly. “How else are we going to get more, then? Imagine making our bitch of a Captain actually pleased with us.”_

_Terror springs to her heart for a few seconds, and it’s only the appearance of the Captain’s first mate, who grabs Kelly by the arm and drags her back to the cage that prevents the men from acting on their horrifying idea._

_Later, when she can think about the incident without panicking, she will be grateful. After all, it was that event that gives her the strength to escape…-_

“I got off lightly,” Sara said calmly as Kelly shook with silent sobs. “I know that now. I don’t need my eyes to see, not really. And if I’d gone with you, I would not have managed to escape a month later after recovering my powers. If I had not escaped a month later, I probably would not have wound up here and found Dalton.” And something shone in her face, something light and utterly content.

Kelly felt – along with guilt and shame – the burning edge of envy in her gut. She had never been that happy. Never.

“I forgave you a long time ago, my friend,” Sara said smiling sadly, and Kelly lost the battle to tears once again.

_-…She leans against Sara’s side and feels warm and safe. It’s like being with her mother again, as the older woman tells her stories about her native North Blue and does everything to make her smile. And for maybe the first time since she landed in this world, Kelly doesn’t feel homesick…-_

* * *

Vivi finished tying Nami securely to Luffy’s back. “We’ll wait for you here,” she told Luffy, Sanji, and Kelly, who would be going up the mountain to the castle. “We’d only slow you down if we came along.”

Usopp nodded.

“Hold on tight, Nami,” Luffy told the ailing navigator.

Dalton sighed. “If you are serious, I won’t try and stop you. But please, take the opposite slope. This one is home to a species of ravenous rabbit called the Lapin. If you met a pack of them you would surely die.”

“That’s why Blondie and I are here,” Kelly said, eyes hidden behind her enormous sunglasses. “I mean, he’s a pathetic excuse for a man, but he should be able to take on a couple’a wittle rabbits. Or is that too much for you, Blondie?” she said, sneering at Sanji.

He puffed up like an enraged peacock. “HOW DARE YOU.” And Kelly instantly felt a hundred times better.

“Let’s go, Sanji, Ciel!” Luffy cried out cheerfully. “Before Nami croaks!”

“Don’t make such a stupid joke, shithead!” Sanji snarled and chased after his captain. Kelly trotted after them, chortling, and subtly rubbing her reddened eyes under the sunglasses.

Fuck, but she hated crying.

* * *

Sara’s powers sometimes scared even her.

She could make a mountain tremble in her rage. She could speak with any animal who walked on the ground and called it home. Flora was a weapon when it touched her hand, even the tamest flower a vicious guard dog.

But even her own powers trembled in wake of that girl’s.

She’d sensed it, even when the girl had come into the slave pens half dead. Even as locked away as it had been then, she’d sensed it, straining beneath the girl’s skin.

Her blind gaze strayed out the window, where she knew the mountain loomed ominously in the distance.

She hadn’t been lying to the other Magus. She wasn’t angry anymore – and it had taken so very long for that to come about. She was happy now and she had forgiven her.

But Sara had been comforted by a vaguely horrifying thought for a long time. Her trials and suffering were over. She had the chance to be truly and completely happy now, and she’d grabbed it with both hands.

Kelly Lewis had a far longer and harder road ahead of her before she could find anything approaching happiness, a road full of blood, heartache, and terror.

Perhaps it was karma, Sara thought placidly, remembering the vision she’d had after the slavers had dragged her back into the cage. But Sara had escaped the cages, in time.

Kelly had paid for the mistake of being born – and would _continue_ to pay – until the day she died.

Sara smiled, pitying the girl who now trudged towards the top of the mountain.

After all, she’d felt the raw envy the girl had experienced when she’d seen Sara and Dalton together, hadn’t she? Only the most hateful of hearts would have still despised her after that, and Sara had never been too fond of that most awful of sicknesses. Hate was a clever virus that could wear a woman away until she knew nothing but that rage, and Sara had never liked it.

But Domoyoji Saraiyu was not a nice person, no matter how much her outward appearance lent to that assumption.

And the thought of the Magus who left her to die suffering gave Sara a great bit of pleasure.

But no one besides herself and her Familiar ever needed to know that.

* * *

“You’re a friggin’ PAIN in the _ASS!_ ” Sanji bellowed, kicking the baby Lapin into the horizon.

Kelly _tsked_. “Now you’ve done it,” she said with a sigh as the three of them continued to run.

“What’re you talking about?” Sanji asked brusquely, turning to chide Luffy about carrying Nami more gently.

Kelly snorted as they emerged over a minor hill and she caught sight of what waited for them. In the snow ahead several enormous, white-furred creatures stood. They looked as though someone had plunked a rabbit’s head onto a humanoid bear’s body, then had pumped the resultant creature full of horse steroids.

_Jesus Christ._

“What the hell are these things?” Sanji gasped.

“They’re big and white…Must be polar bears!” Luffy said.

 _Jesus_ H. _Christ_ , this guy was a fucking moron-

Kelly’s eyebrows shot into her hairline as the Lapin jumped into the air and soared towards them like a meteor. The three of them leapt away just before it came crashing down, leaving in its wake a hole over ten feet in diameter. Kelly tried to send out a greeting, but its mind was closed to her completely. _Fuck_.

Sanji and Luffy argued about gorillas and polar bears – _what the hell was wrong with those two idiots_ – then Nami let out a faint moan.

“Soon…t-to…Arabasta,” she whispered.

Luffy sighed. “It’s okay Nami, go back to sleep. Don’t worry about anything else right now.”

Kelly saw Sanji smiling fondly – _and why the hell did that piss her off so much?_ – and turned to face the Lapins.

“We need to reach that doctor,” he said.

“Let’s do this!” Luffy said.

“No, Luffy, you can’t,” Kelly told the boy, walking up beside Sanji and cracking her knuckles.

“Ehh, why?”

“Idiot!” Sanji chastised him. “The scoundrel’s right. If you land a punch or take a hit, all the shock will go into Nami-san’s body.”

The Lapin launched themselves forward.

“Then what do I do now?!” Luffy yelled, sliding under a deadly swipe of razor-sharp claws.

“For now, just run and dodge and run! But don’t retreat,” Sanji told him.

“THAT’S TOO CONFUSING!”

Kelly danced out of the way of a strike that would have severed her spine had it landed and pivoted on a heel. Her muscles bulging, she wrapped an arm around the Lapin’s arm and with a roar, tossed it into the six Lapin who had been sneaking up on the two pirates.

Luffy and Sanji stared at her until she felt the tell-tale burning in her cheeks.

“What?”

Luffy grinned at her and kept running, Sanji close behind, still shooting her strange looks as she ran to catch up.

“Impressed, Blondie?” she asked, shooting him a lascivious smirk.

Sanji twitched. “Flanc Shoot!” he yelled in reply, and kicked a Lapin into a crowd of its fellows, knocking them over like bowling pins. He landed and shot her a smirk that made something flutter in her stomach.

“Touché,” she said with a delighted grin.

* * *

“Yosh! I guess we lost ‘em,” Luffy said.

“No, we didn’t,” Kelly sighed, and pointed into the distance where the horde awaited.

“Damn it, they cut us off!” Sanji swore.

Then the Lapin began jumping up and down in unison.

“What’re they doing?” Luffy asked, and the three of them watched the Lapin jump in a mix of amusement, curiosity, and annoyance. Then, after several minutes had passed, Kelly remembered and her face went as white as the snow.

She turned her head and met Sanji’s eyes, which bulged in a face gone as pale as her own.

“ _Fuck_ ,” they said together.

“What’s happening?” Luffy asked as the ground began to rumble.

“Run!” Kelly bellowed. “Fucking run! We gotta get to higher ground, right fucking **_now_**!”

A wave of snow began to rush down the mountainside at speeds that made Kelly’s heart leap into her throat. Everything in its path – trees, boulders, whatever – were consumed by the oncoming wall of snow and ice. And the sound was indescribable, like an F5 tornado.

“AVALANCHE!”

The three of them ran for their lives.

“What are we going to do, Sanji?!” Luffy shrieked.

“How the fuck would I know?” Sanji yelled back. “In any case, Nami-san comes first! Second, Nami-san, Third, Nami-san! Fourth, Nami-san! You protect her with your life, Luffy, you got that?”

Kelly looked wildly around the snowy landscape for somewhere to go, but there was nothing, and fucking hell, she didn’t want to die trapped in a tomb of snow and ice, she’d done so much-she saw a cliff protruding from the mountain to her right.

“TO THE CLIFF!” she yelled over the roar of the approaching avalanche. “THE CLIFF, THE CLIFF, THE CLIFF!!” She ran past the two men, feeling avalanche’s approach thunder in her bones. The three of them jumped onto the cliff, and she heard Sanji breathe a sigh of relief.

“We made it in time-” Sanji swore as the wave of snow reared up high over them.

“It’s not high enough! JUMP!” She bellowed at the two of them. Then there was the sensation of receiving a full-body high five from a giant, and all three of them went flying.

“FFFFFFFUUUUCKK!” Kelly screamed, toppling head-over-arse through the air. As the world revolved, she caught sight of one of the toppled trees racing down the mountain, born steadily along by the ferocity of the snow that had snapped it from its roots. She struggled to right her body for several minutes before she remembered.

_Christ, you have magic, you fucking idiot!_

She drew in a long breath and _twisted_ , the air around her body, flinging herself towards the tree and landing lightly on its side. Exhaling in relief, and using her magic to guide her makeshift snowboard past any obstacles (including those thrice-damned Lapin), she looked wildly around for Luffy, Sanji, and Nami.

She cackled when she saw them – safe and whole – but then she caught sight of the boulder laying in their path.

“LOOK OUT!” She yelled. “EYES FRONT! LOOK IN FRONT OF YOU!”

Sanji’s eyes snapped to hers and then back to the space in front of them. There was panic on his face for a few blinding moments…then another, darker emotion as he looked at Nami and Luffy.

Horror clawed its way into her throat as she recognized it, and she promptly abandoned her own tree and began leapfrogging to the pirates.

It was resignation at one’s own death she saw on Sanji’s face. How could she ever laughed at that? Even in the confines of a television show…But Gin had been right, he’d _always_ been right, this wasn’t a TV show any longer and Sanji was fully prepared to die for his captain and his navigator.

 _No, no, Gods damn it, Blondie, you fucking moron don’t do this, no,_ Sanji _-_

The cook grabbed Luffy and with a mighty heave, sent both him and Nami high into the air. Kelly was still too far away to do anything, but she heard Sanji say with that damned debonair smile on his lips, the gentlemen’s gentleman even now, “You have to treat a lady with care.” Then the tree crashed into the boulder, splintering it and sending Sanji into the air with a pained yell and a sickening crack that stopped Kelly’s heart for a few agonized seconds.

 _Fuck_ -and she launched herself forward as Sanji toppled towards the unforgiving rush of snow beneath him, magic and panic speeding her steps across the snow. She swore again as Sanji disappeared under the snow, and promptly dove in after him.

It was cold and white everywhere around her, with an immense pressure crushing in on all sides. She thought she might have screamed, but if she had, the noise was instantly lost in the roar of the snow.

 _Where is he?!_ She screamed in her mind and with her Magic. _God damn it, show me!_

Her magic flowed out into the snow, searching, seeking, until it looped around a lump of life-energy somewhere to her left. _There you fucking are._ The magic latched onto fluttering remains of Sanji’s life-source with surprising ferocity and began pulling him towards her. She met it halfway, scooping the unconscious – but not dead – man into her arms. Kicking off from a rock below her, using her magic to propel her up, up, _up_ -

She broke the surface with a shuddering gasp, and with a mighty effort, wrenched herself and her burden free of the snow. With a shout of “ _Geppo!_ ” she leapt into the air to the sound of Luffy cheering his brains out.

As she landed on the cliff beside him and Nami with a gasp, she looked down at the unconscious man in her arms.

 _Fucking idiot, more trouble than you’re worth,_ she thought fondly.

* * *

The Lapin did not have a name. It was too young for such things, and did not much need one. It did not much need anything, not when it had its Mama with it.

But its Mama was gone. The white rushing stuff had taken her away, until the little Lapin could only see her paw sticking out from the snow, still and stiff and cold. It used its claws, trying to dig through the snow, to get her out, but it hurt its paws and it was so cold.

It cried, digging as fast as it could. _Mama_ , it sobbed in the language of the Lapin. _Mama, it’s cold and I’m scared, Mama, Mama-_

It heard a crunching and whirled around to see the creatures its Mama and family had been chasing before the white rushing consumed the world. Two of the creatures – the red one and dark one – carried the orange one and yellow one each.

It was so scared because these creatures had survived the snow, but it put itself in front of its Mama, crying as ferociously as it could, _Go away, go away!_ But still the creatures approached, until they stood almost over it. The red one reached out a hand and the little Lapin cowered in fear, but then there was another sound, and snow fell on its head.

It looked up and saw the red one pulling its Mama out of the snow, alive and well, and it cried with joy, leaping into its Mama’s arms.

The creatures moved away, and the little Lapin heard a voice speaking in its head, and it knew the voice came from the dark creature.

 _Good luck, and watch out for a steel-jawed man with an enormous body._ The voice was everything warm in the world, like being held by Mama, and good things to eat and warm sun, and the little Lapin liked the voice.

Its Mama watched the creatures leave, and nodded.

 _Thank you, Magus_ , it grumbled back.

* * *

The Lapin had intervened to save them when they’d been attacked by Wapol. Kelly hoped the creatures survived the encounter.

They were adorable, after all, and Kelly had a soft spot for adorable animals that could probably snap her neck in two seconds.

She shifted Sanji on her back, keeping up the steady, almost miniscule trickle of magic flowing into his body. Until they got to Kureha, it would be the only thing keeping his injuries from overwhelming him. She could practically taste the scent of blood that dripped from his wounds.

It made something inside her tremble with rage.

She looked up at the mountain and swallowed. “Ready to do this Luffy?”

“Yosh,” the pirate said in reply. She tightened the ties that kept Sanji’s arms wrapped around her neck, and began her ascent.

* * *

Sara breathed in and the snow shifted as vines whipped out, bearing a still and cold form. Her heart nearly stopped as her husband’s body came into view. One of the men – Adrian – placed a hand on his chest and turned to her.

“His-his heart’s stopped, Sara,” he breathed out, and the people around them gasped.

No, she thought and placed her hands on his chest. She had lost so much, she would _not lose him_. Magic flared for one searing moment, and she prayed that she would not kill him. Only a Magus with hair-fine control could work healing Magic around a cursed Devil's Fruit.

“You wake up, Dalton,” she ordered, ignoring the trembling in her voice. “I will not let my son grow up without his father, do you understand me? He needs you, our people need you, Gods…” Her voice broke. “You stupid man, please… _I_ need you.” She listened in the silence, hope draining away by the second.

Then…a fluttering under her hand, a shifting of a heart. Tears burned in her eyes and she looked to the sky, whispering her thanks to the Gods.

“He’s alive!” Adrian yelled, and the crowd cheered.

Sara turned to the others. “Quickly, we must get him inside,” she said, before staggering, both hands going to her belly. Two men caught her, keeping her from hitting the snow.

“Come on, Sara,” one of them said. “Let’s get you inside.”

“I do believe I over did it,” she said with an almost wild laugh, her eyes never leaving Dalton’s body.

Usopp watched them carry the pregnant woman and her husband inside, before turning to one of the local men and tapping his shoulder.

“How’d she do that?” he asked.

The man looked at him and blinked. “Ah, you mean Lady Sara? Don’t you know? She’s a great sorceress who came to this island before Wapol was chased off. She’s a big part of the reason we all survived that horrid day. She and Dalton-san were married about a year after that.”

Usopp turned to Vivi. “Vivi, have you ever heard of something so ridiculous? Magic doesn’t exist.”

Vivi shook her head. “You’re wrong about that, Usopp-san. I’ve heard stories about people like her, women and men of every race who could do things not even Devil Fruit users could. Amazing things, like stopping the tides, creating life when there was none, flying with the winds, even altering another person’s very thoughts.”

Something about that niggled at the back of Usopp’s mind. “Is that so,” he said, half to himself.

“Usopp-san? Is something wrong?” Vivi asked and Usopp shook himself.

“No, it’s nothing Vivi. Let’s go see how Dalton-san is doing.”

* * *

-… _Her mouth is soft and warm and curves up at the side. Kelly blinks repeatedly and cannot think of anything eloquent to say in return. She’s struck stupid with desire and arousal. She’s never looked at anyone like this before._

_Lien smiles, wide and bright and mischievous, and leans in to steal another kiss, her fingers curling in Kelly’s boyishly cropped hair._

_“You’re beautiful as a girl,” Lien says. “You’d be handsome as a man, too.”_

_Kelly can’t help the joy that spurts in her heart, and she leans in to steal a kiss herself, tasting Lien’s smile on her tongue._

_She tastes happiness too, cliché as that sounds. Happiness is better than chocolate, she thinks dreamily, and deepens the kiss…-_


	12. First Impressions, Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zoro, Vivi, Luffy, Chopper, and...someone else...have thoughts on our protagonist.

* * *

**ZORO**

The first thing he thought when he got a good look at this Ciel Russo was _DANGER._ The thought was sudden and violent in its fury, and for all the other man wore a smile as easily as he wore his clothes, doted on his cats and Nami, Zoro did not trust him. At all.

It was the feeling he got from Mihawk - though not as intimidating - all over again, but now he’s going to have to deal with it on his ship, around his crewmates, around his fucking _captain_ , so sue him if that wasn't making him very happy. The feeling only increased even more after what happens at Whisky Peak. Zoro wasn’t stupid, for all he was willing to enjoy some damn fine alcohol with the other man.

The dark man moved like a snake, struck like a snake, and was ten times stronger than even some of the most hardened mercenaries Zoro had ever met.

Why in the hell had a man as strong as that – a man who could have easily made himself first mate or even captain of any other pirate ship on the seas – choose their ship to travel into the Grand Line on? A man that strong – who even the money witch respected – could have had his pick of ships and he knew it.

So why the Merry Go?

Damn, he fucking hated mysteries.

His nose barely touching the snow, his legs held in a straight line high above him, Zoro let out a grunt of dissatisfaction. He turned his head a scant inch to see the mountain Luffy, the money witch, and dartboard brow – the dark man with them - would be ascending in the distance.

He wondered if the cook would be able to handle dealing with the dark man. Normally, he wouldn’t have worried – even though he didn’t like the cook, Zoro knew damn well he could handle himself – but Russo was _obsessed_ with the blond man.

The green-haired man wasn’t blind. He’d seen the way Russo treated the cook, equal parts viciously sadistic and wantonly sexual, teasing him, mocking his cooking, taking especial pleasure in beating the ever-living hell out of him. Usopp had commented once that Russo knew how to push the cook’s buttons even better than Zoro could, and the swordsman had to agree.

Zoro and the cook were rivals, plain and simple. They could beat the shit out of each other, call each other every bad name in the book and then some, but in the end, even though neither would ever admit it to themselves (much less each other) they respected each other.

Russo did not. The dark man respected _no one_ on the ship – except for the witch, who he’d lovingly cared for on their way to the island, and what the hell had that been about? – and took an inordinate amount of pleasure in playing with the blond man.

Zoro didn’t mind men who were into other men (that would be a little hypocritical in his case, if that were true), but the way Russo treated the cook was…different. Dangerous. Like Russo was waiting for the chance to break the blond man into splinters and gleefully craft a broken plaything from what was left.

He knew perfectly well what men like that could do to the world around them. His fingers tightened in the snow as memories threatened to break his calm. He let his legs fall and stood up, rolling his shoulders. There was no use worrying about things that were out of his hands.

If the dark man tried anything with the cook, Zoro knew full well his captain would kill him.

And Zoro would be _more_ than happy to help.

* * *

**VIVI**

Her Royal Highness, Princess Nefertari Vivi of Arabasta, had never before met a man quite like Ciel Russo. A man so darkly, _unabashedly_ handsome, a man who didn’t care she was a Princess, but still respected it.

 _‘Well,’_ Vivi thought, lips still burning in remembrance of the kiss the man had given her several days before. _‘Perhaps not respect._ ’

A heated flush rose over her cheeks, and the Princess was grateful for the chill of the landscape around them, as the blush went unnoticed. It had been her first kiss, and Vivi was pleased that such a man had been the one to take it.

She’d seen the man fight, like a sensuous coil of flowing energy, like a viper, dancing around its prey before it struck. Perhaps now she could truly appreciate why her father had fallen in love with her mother, who’d been a priestess and dancer of the Snake Goddess Ernutet. But after her mother had left the Order, she’d given up dancing for the duties required of Arabasta’s Queen.

The stories of the beautiful Head Priestess’s dances had been Vivi’s childhood bedtime story of choice for years.

And when her mother had died, it had been those stories that had bridged the gap between grieving father and daughter.

-… _Her father laughed, and it lightened the shadows in his eyes. “She was beautiful, her hair flying, her eyes full of power. The music was thrumming in my veins and the incense made my head fuzzy. The snakes danced to the music around her, until they matched her every move. The moon shone through the window behind her, full and bright. I had never seen a woman such as her in all my years and never have since._

_Even as young as I was, no more than seventeen, moon-stupid with drink and excitement of the festival, I knew then she would be the woman I would marry.” Her father leaned back against the wall and he smiled at her as she crawled into his arms.  “I hope one day you may find one who you can love and who loves you as she and I did. It’s a rare thing in this world.”…-_

Was this the way her father had felt?

Vivi smiled up in the direction of the sky. Perhaps not.

After all, Ciel was dangerous in a way her mother had never been – perhaps he was not an avowed pirate, but something darker, with blood on his hands and something broken in his eyes, a man who had probably taken a great deal of pleasure from a great deal many women. Ciel was the sort of man her father and Igar-

Vivi shuddered quietly, fingers biting into her palms, and buried the memory of her oldest and dearest friend deep in her own mind.

Her father certainly would not have approved of the dark-haired man.

Though it mattered little, in the scheme of things. She was a naïve princess trying to do the impossible, and Ciel Russo was not the sort of man who would ever find it in himself to make the sacrifices needed as a consort of Arabasta.

But for a while, Vivi could dream without guilt of wishing it was different.

* * *

**MERRY**

She breathed in, out, in, out. The Magic of the girl who was not just a girl made the ship who had not always been just a ship feel as though she was home again.

As though she was whole again.

She was not long for this world, she knew this, being a pirate ship guaranteed it, but she was glad she would have a _sister_ to guide her into her final sleep when the time came. And the family she’d found was a good one.

Her exile would not be as awful as she had feared long ago.

Had the Gods taken pity on her? To give her comfort in her undeserved punishment?

Perhaps. She smiled as the snow fell from the sky.

The water curved around her hull, rocking her with the gentle musicality of the waves, and so she slept.

And so she dreamed.

* * *

**LUFFY**

The wind bit into his skin like a bear’s claws, and he shuddered, but he kept his grip, even as the very mountain seemed to shake beneath his hands.

Nami felt like a bonfire on his back, and he could feel her trembling badly, unable to stop. He caught sight of Ciel climbing beside him, fingernails digging into the flat surface. Sanji was on his back like Nami was with Luffy.

Luffy normally liked snow and the cold – his home island hadn’t been too big on the stuff, and it rarely came – because it usually meant building snowmen and hot chocolate. But now the cold was menacing and icy, making his body feel sluggish and stupid and the snow made the side of the mountain slippery.

His fingers slipped and panic whited out his thoughts – not for himself, he could survive the fall just fine, but for Nami, _shit, shit, grab on, grab on-_

A hand latched onto his wrist and kept him steady. He turned his head and saw Ciel watching him, clinging to the mountain with one hand.

“Slow and steady wins the race, Strawhat!” he yelled. “It won’t do Nami or Sanji any good if we rush and fall off the mountain, ya got me?”

He nodded and latched back onto the side of the mountain.

There was something off about Ciel Russo, Luffy knew subconsciously, though his conscious mind could never fully make those thoughts coherent. Something broken in his eyes, something that would probably never heal back whole, and might never heal again. Luffy saw it when Ciel teased Sanji, whenever Ciel fought, and in those random times when Luffy caught sight of the sly, mocking, slightly sad smiles Ciel would be wearing when he thought he was alone.

It made a part of Luffy hurt and want to break things. Like when Nami had stabbed herself at that shitty shark’s park, or when Usopp had tried to take on that cat-freak for Kaya, or when Sanji had been struck in the stomach so hard he coughed up blood, or when he’d heard the onion-head laugh about breaking his promise to Zoro.

His nakama were his most precious things, and when someone hurt them, nothing would stop him from returning the favor tenfold.

But who had hurt Ciel?

_-“I had an older sister…” he heard Ciel say to Nami and Luffy could hear the tears in the older man’s voice. “And I miss her very much.” And for a moment he remembered top hat perched over blond hair and toothy smile and the air clogged in his throat…-_

There was nothing visisble for Luffy to punch to make Ciel feel better, no physical obstacle he could remove so that the shadows in Ciel's eyes would go away. It annoyed the fuck out of him, like something itching at the back of his skull and he couldn’t reach the itch, no matter how hard he tried.

The wind kicked up, and Luffy gritted his teeth even as his fingers lost their grip for a few paralyzing moments. But Ciel's hand latched around his wrist before he could slide further.

“Strawhat!” Ciel yelled over the sound of the roaring wind. “We ain’t gonna make it up the mountain like this.”

“What’re we s-supposed to do then?” Luffy shouted. His fingers were numb, like the rest of him, and he knew the other man was telling the truth.

Ciel looked up to the sky, the wind picking up speed, trying to toss the four of them to the ground below. Then he began to work Sanji around with the hand not digging into the mountainside so that the unconscious blond man – with his arms still tied around the dark man’s neck – rested on the knee pressed against the unforgiving stone. Then the man looked at Luffy, his eyes hard and determined.

“Luffy, grab onto my back!”

“ _Whaaaaat?”_ Luffy shrieked, even as his bloody fingers scrabbled against the stone.

Frustration entered Ciel's eyes, and he looked back up into the sky.

“I can get us up the mountain, but you have to trust me! There’s a storm coming and we won’t be able to hold on through it. We need to get up to the castle _right now_!” Ciel yelled.

There was a dull roaring in the air, Luffy realized, and he nodded. He quickly clambered onto Ciel's back, looping his arms around the other man’s neck, reveling in the warmth that seeped into his exposed skin. He’d given his coat to Nami – she needed it – but hadn’t realized how cold he was.

He heard Ciel whispering something under his breath, something that sounded like a fervent prayer as he tucked an arm around Sanji and held him close.

Then Ciel pressed his feet against the stone and leapt off.

Luffy felt the bottom of his stomach drop out and a rush of excitement pound through his body.

 _I don’t know why Zoro doesn’t trust him_ , he thought for a moment, the scream of excitement and the instinctive “AAAAAAAGH!” strangling in his throat.

_Ciel's definitely our nakama._

* * *

**CHOPPER**

There were four people resting on the snow – a blond man and an orange-haired woman who were both unconscious, a black-haired boy who looked like he would soon be joining them, and a long-haired man (who also smelled like a woman, and not human at all) who was struggling upright, stinking of exhaustion and fatigue.

No wonder, Chopper thought, since the man had carried all three of his companions up through the storm, stepping on the air like it was ground. Was it some sort of Devil Fruit? How could someone do something like that?

Doctorine had paled when she’d seen the long-haired man(?), and gone to his side, pressing her fingers against his forehead. The man immediately went limp, and she went back to the other three. She passed a cursory gaze over the black-haired boy and lightly pressed her fingers against the blond haired man’s back. Then she turned to the woman and pressed her fingers against her forehead, only to hiss in shock and yank her fingers back.

“Chopper, we’ll need to get the girl inside right now,” she said quietly, and if Chopper hadn’t known his teacher better, he could have sworn she sounded _worried_. “She’ll die in less than two days if we don’t get her started on an antibody regimen. Then we’ll deal with the blondie – five cracked vertebrae and at least seven broken ribs. And heat up a barrel of water and throw that one in it,” she said, pointing at the boy wearing the red shirt. “What the hell was he thinking, being out in this weather with no coat?”

As Chopper picked up the blond man and the woman (and she felt like a fire in his arms, radiating staggering waves of heat), Doctorine made to haul the other two over her shoulders, but stopped as the boy grabbed her shoulder. Chopper could see the ice-blue of his lips, bloodied fingers and face even as he struggled to hold onto Doctorine’s arms.

Chopper stared. How was he still conscious? The level of hypothermia his body was experiencing should have _killed_ him, and at the very least should have shut his body down into a purely defensive coma.

“M-my friends…” he slurred, trying to keep his eyes opened and focused on Doctorine’s face. “ _My friends…”_

He couldn’t completely read the expression on Doctorine’s face, but he saw something in her eyes that just might have been amusement, or even sympathy.

“We’ll take care of your friends,” she said, and the boy promptly fainted. Doctorine shook her head wryly and picked him up

“But what will we do with him, Doctorine?” he asked, gesturing to the man slung over her shoulder.

Something amused passed over her face for the briefest of moments before she shook her head. “We’ll put he-him somewhere private,” she said. “If we give him a flat surface and some warmth for a few hours, he should heal quickly.” The two of them began walking back towards the castle door as fast as they dared with their patients.

But then Chopper saw the long-haired man’s exposed arm – the sleeve pushed back by the awkward position he was in – and felt his eyes widen. Glittering faintly in the light reflected off the snow were silvery blue scales.

“Remember what I told you, Chopper?” Doctorine said, and her eyes were cold. She’d seen the scales too. “I’ll put him in a room away from the others, so they don’t see it.”

“Wouldn’t they know?” Chopper asked. “I mean, the kid called them his friends, didn’t he?”

Doctorine laughed as they entered the castle, and it was a little sad.

“Chopper, I doubt he’s told them. You know how humanity responds to his kind. Would they be so willing to accept him then if they learned he was a snake? If they knew he was a monster?”

“B-But he just carried them all up a mountain!” Chopper protested as the two of them worked in tandem to care for the patients. “I think they’d be grateful for that much at least.”

Doctorine sighed, her eyes tired in a way he’d never seen before.

“Very rarely do humans ever do things that sound reasonable to the rest of the world. And what’s reason and sanity and gratitude worth when you can be sold for worth hundreds of millions of beri on the slave market?” There was that awful thing in Doctorine’s eyes now, bitter and cynical and tired. He’d seen it only a few times before in his years with her.

She rubbed her wrists, then shook her head.

“Take that one into the room down the hall, near your workroom, Chopper,” Doctorine said as she turned back to the orange-haired woman. “Then I’ll need you back here to assist me with the surgery for blondie here.”

Chopper quickly gathered the long-haired Snake into his arms and trotted down the hallway. As he nudged open the door, he looked down at the creature in his arms.

“You’re kind of like me and Doctorine, then,” he said and found himself smiling.

He set the long-haired Snake on the bed and tucked the blankets up around his chin in a gesture he remembered well from his years with Hirulik-

Chopper rubbed his eyes furiously. “Well, you don’t have to be worried. We’re all monsters here,” he told the unconscious figure in the bed.

There was no reply, but Chopper still smiled, wondering if the other monster would be friendly. If the two of them could be friends.

That would be nice.


	13. Friendship is a Beautiful Thing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kelly meets Doctor Kureha and her adorable assistant.

* * *

She swam slowly back into consciousness, exhaustion dragging at her limbs and mind. The world was a murky black soup of tar, and she fought for each step back towards the dim light waiting beyond.

Her eyes opened slowly and she shuddered in a gasp of cold air flavored at the edges with the scent of snow-covered stone. She could feel Shere and Gin clamoring at the edges of her thoughts, but she shushed them with hurried reassurances, and they quieted.

Her senses told her she was in a large room, with a fire blazing in a hearth at the opposite end, a desk with many chemicals bubbling away atop it nearby, and a window bolted shut against the raging storm outside on the far wall.

Another breath brought to her knowledge the pump of warm blood through veins, the steady beat of a heart, soft breathing, _someone was there, defend, bite, **kill**_ -

Instinctively her head shot out, her mouth open wider than it had ever been, something bitter surging behind her jaw, and made to close her fangs around the creature near her. But two strong, heavily callused hands closed around her jaw, freezing her in place.

Magic roared down from the touch, warm and soft and _safe_ , and the bitter tasting liquid behind her jaw receded.

“Now, enough of that,” came a woman’s voice, brash and somewhat hoarse. “You’re safe here, and among friends.”

The Magic seeped into her body, calming her. The red bled away from her eyes, leaving the world in color once more. Sitting on a chair beside her was a very, very familiar older woman, with blonde-white hair pulled back into ponytail. Her face was heavily creased in the way of the very old (though her body had curves women decades younger would have killed for), and black eyes glittered over a hooked beak of a nose. Then her mouth opened just a bit, and _a hint of a forked tongue poked out._

The draconic Magus smirked at her.

 _‘Doctorine is a fucking Dragon Magus!’_ a tiny voice in her head screamed, thoroughly losing its shit as it flailed about in her mind. _‘Holy fuck, this is fucking awesome…SO THAT’S HOW SHE HAS HER GIRLISH FIGURE MY GOD THAT MAKES TOO MUCH SENSE.”_

Kelly had met several Magi in her travels (even though they’d all been low-powered ones, with barely any traces of the animalistic nature that gave them a closer connection to Magic, like Nami and Sara, but they’d mostly chased her away for fear of the Daemons coming after them too), and expected to meet several more, hiding in the midst of humanity. She just hadn’t expected Chopper’s _Doctorine_ to be a fucking _Dragon_ , one who could trace her lineage back to _the Gods themselves_ , and the only type of Magi rarer than a Snake.

“Welcome back to the land of the living, idiot. You nearly killed yourself with that little stunt, carrying those other three imbeciles up during one of this island’s worse storms. I managed to wake up the bits of your Magic that were sealed away, though my power only goes so far. What the hell were you thinking, sealing so much of yourself away? If I hadn’t gotten to you in time, you’d have killed yourself through exhaustion,” Kureha said, and whacked the younger woman across the head.

Kelly just blinked at her, the words slowly filtering through her brain.

“Wh-what do you mean?” she finally managed to get out. “My power is bound? _What?_ ”

Kureha stared at her. “You’re joking.”

“…No?”

Silence reigned for several moments as the two women just stared each other.

Then Kureha sighed. “I should’ve known it wouldn’t be this simple. Ishma damn it all, of course the most powerful Magus to walk the world in centuries has no training and bound powers, and gets dumped on my lap, of course they does _._ ”

Kelly blinked, not sure if she should take umbrage for the implied insult or be flattered that the other Magus was the first person she’d ever met who used the more accurate, gender-neutral pronoun ‘they’ when referring to the younger Magus.

She knew she was relatively untrained, even with Gin’s help (he’d made that much clear when they’d first started training that his help wouldn’t get her nearly as far as actual training with a proper Magus would) but the thing about her powers being bound?

What the hell did _that_ mean?

Gin had made noises about her getting her powers bound after Aratu…after that had happened, but he’d stopped soon enough.

Kelly felt her eyes widen as she remembered what had happened on that tiny island a week after waking up on the cruise ship, the memory a flash of light in her mind.

-… _“You will have a great less level of control over your Magic now,” he says quietly, rubbing her back as she curls into a ball in his lap and wails her grief. “Not until She is sure you will not lose your temper again. I’m so sorry Mistress, I knew She would do this to further control you…” And there was a feeling like a bear trap closing over her mind, a sigh of exasperation emanating across and through the very fabric of the universe itself, and Kelly went unconscious, a voice whispering in her ears **“All this over one idiot human girl.”** …-_

Had he bound her magic? No, she would have known it, and Gin would never have taken such liberties with her, even if she asked it of him.

Who was that ‘She’ Gin had spoken of? Had someone else bound her magic? Why had she only just now realizing this?

She knew Kureha wasn’t lying about having broken bindings or whatnot – she felt freer than she’d been in years.

“I can teach you how to break some of the bindings,” Kureha said, startling the younger Magus out of her trance. “Your friends will still be out for a while yet, a couple days by my reckoning, plenty of time for me to teach you some of what you need to know.”

Kelly nodded slowly. “I’d appreciate that. I haven’t exactly had the opportunity to learn from a strong Magus, and whatever you could teach me would be great.”

Kureha leaned back, watching her carefully. “You’ve had quite a trip, haven’t you.” It wasn’t a question.

The younger Magus shrugged. “I suppose.”

The door creaked as it opened, and Kelly turned her head to look as a tiny form entered, carrying a tray laden with something that smelled delicious.

“Doctorine, the girl is asleep and her fever has gone down since I last checked,” the humanoid creature said, before catching sight of the two of them and jerking in shock. It was a tiny thing, about the size of a toddler, covered all over in light brown fur, and stood easily on two legs, though instead of hands and feet it had hooves, and its nose, strangely enough, was blue. It wore dark purple-ish shorts and a pink top hat emblazoned with a white X. Two curved antlers stuck out from holes in the sides of the hat.

Kelly stared.

“Chopper, bring that tray over here so our guest can eat. And by the way, I’m Ageha Kureha, daughter of Tiamat Farseeing, Priestess of the Avnae clan. This is Tony Tony Chopper, my apprentice,” Doctorine said, beckoning to the tiny reindeer.

Chopper inched over, watching her curiously, and gently handed his teacher the tray. On it was a bowl of thick brown soup with a wooden spoon, a plate of fresh bread, a small cup of very strong-smelling mead, and a fair-sized saucer of some clear liquid that sang with magic.

“Thank you,” Kelly said softly, nodding to Chopper, who smiled shyly, and semi-hid behind Doctorine.

“After you eat, we will begin breaking what barriers that we can for the moment, and getting you used to the influx of Magic,” Kureha said, taking the cup of clear liquid and placing on a nightstand beside the bed. “That liquid is imbued with the essence of some runes I crafted a while ago. It will begin to assist in the breaking. You’re strong enough, Gods all be thanked, that you’ll only need some guiding and a strong magical shock to get through.”

“Who bound me?” Kelly asked quietly. “Because I don’t remember doing it myself.”

The older Magus paused, and something wary entered her eyes. “…Someone very strong. Someone who would like you under control. Someone who’s playing a very dangerous game with the Gods… It would not be wise for me to speak more about it. I think you will discover their identity soon enough, if you continue on your trip,” Kureha eventually said, then rose from her chair.

“Chopper, keep our guest company and make sure she finishes all of her meal. When she does, come fetch me.”

“Ah, ma’am?” Kelly said, gently touching the older woman’s hand before she moved away.

“Hm?”

“I’m Kel- _Ciel_. Ciel Russo. Call me Ciel.”

Kureha raised an eyebrow, but then nodded. “Call me Doctorine. And make sure to eat your food, brat.” The woman left, and the two of them were left alone.

There was a fairly comfortable and curious silence, before Chopper worked up the courage to pull himself onto Doctorine’s chair by the bed.

“You should eat,” he said, pointing one hoof towards the tray, watching her curiously. “It’ll help you feel better.”

Kelly grinned. “No need to tell me twice, boyo. It smells wonderful.” She picked up the spoon – the gnawing hunger in her stomach finally making itself known – and dug in.

The soup was wonderful, thick and beefy, stuffed with rehydrated dried vegetables and a pleasant mix of spices that settled well in her stomach. The bread was light and soft, made from sort of grain she didn’t recognize, but lightly sweet and went perfectly with the soup. The mead left a trail of fire racing down her throat, and chased away the remaining chill from the climb up the mountain. She sighed with relief after she had eaten her fill, and turned her gaze on the reindeer.

“What are you then, little one?” Kelly asked, careful to keep everything but curiosity from her voice. “I’ve not seen the like of you in all my years-” Technically that was true. She’d never seen anything like him in this world, and it wasn’t as though she could say she knew all about him because he was from a TV show back home, now could she? “-and I can tell you are not a Magus like Doctorine and myself.”

Chopper sighed, and Kelly resisted the frankly startling urge to giggle as the reindeer straightened his hat.

“Um, well, I ate the Hito Hito no Mi. I was just a reindeer before,” and he shrugged, looking tired and vaguely ashamed. But then he brightened and looked back at her.

“But, but you’re like me and Doctorine, aren’t you? I saw your scales! Are you a pirate? Were your friends pirates? …Do, do you think we could be friends?” He chirped, and despite the instinctive clutch of shock and unease in her belly at the knowledge that he _knew_ , something inside her softened.

He sounded so lonely, so desperate for a friend that it hurt the thing deep inside of her that curled up tight behind the walls she had been forced to construct after arriving in this world. The thing that had urged her to care for Nami, to help Usopp in Little Garden. It ached now, as she looked into Chopper’s big, dark eyes shining with desperate hope.

Should she return the greeting? She was unused to trusting anyone beyond her cats and even Sara had set off some internal alarms when she’d met her again, alarms that had been muffled under the guilt. (Because if she thought now, she remembered the look of utter disgust on the other Magus’s face when they’d talked that had been so quickly hidden, and the thread of insincerity as Sara had ‘forgiven’ her, but she’d expected that, given what she’d done to the other Magus) But it wasn’t happening now, no alarms were going off, she _wanted_ this.

And that seemed wrong.

She sighed.

It was _Chopper_ , she reasoned. He was tiny, cute, and it wasn’t as though he was truly _human_. And he was so desperate, for someone who would look at him and not see a freak, nor a monster. ( _And so was she.)_

Well, he had Kureha, and she had Gin and Shere, but a friend was different. Kureha was Chopper’s teacher, and the cats were her Familiars.

But someone outside of their own respective circles, a stranger they’d never met before? Someone _not_ predisposed to fondness and mutual affection? That was temptation beyond endurance.

Kelly grinned, and folded her arms on her blanket covered legs, only now realizing she was wearing only her underclothes and underarmor, and her hair had been removed from its braid. It was a strange feeling, to be so exposed.

“I’d like to be your friend, little man, but I require something first,” she said as solemnly as she could. Chopper blinked, and seemed to deflate.

“W-what?” He asked, wary.

She propped her chin on her hand.

“Friendships require hugs, Chopper-chan,” she said, and looked him directly in the eyes. “If you want to start being my friend, I require a hug first.”

It was heartbreaking the way his eyes lit up and he practically launched himself out of his chair and into her arms. He nearly poked her in the eyes with his antlers as his tiny arms curled around her neck, but he was soft and warm against her skin.

And the thing in her mind, the thing starved for lack of touch and affection, purred happily as Kelly returned the hug.

She’d always had a secret fondness for cute, fluffy things.

* * *

Kelly sighed as she studied the person in the mirror. It was _odd_ to see herself naked. She hadn’t seen her body in years. For years, even back as just a human, she’d preferred to wear clothes that covered every inch of her body. Even with Mina she’d rarely gone naked, knowing both of them preferred it that way. With all of her partners it’d been that way.

And these days she couldn’t bear the sight of her flesh, as marred by scales and scars as it was.

But if she set aside the instinctual disgust and revulsion at the sight of the body in the mirror, and the horrifying knowledge that _yes, this was indeed her body_ , it was interesting to _look_ at it, to dissect it with her fingers and mind, to run her fingers across the silvery blue chips of metal or hardened skin (who knew what those things were made of), to watch the toned, muscular body in the mirror, so different from the generous curves and chubby bulges of her previous body.

It was this detached mindset that allowed her to look at the body in the full-length mirror of the bathroom (which connected to the room she’d awoken in) still wet and glistening from the shower Kureha had forced her into (telling her that magical cleaning was all well and good, but it was nothing compared to the cleansing of a hot, thundering shower for the body and mind) without flinching.

The dense tumble of black-brown hair that fell to the small of her back was still soaked from the shower (and Kureha had been right, a shower really did do wonders for the mind and body both). Her skin was a pale, pale ivory but for the skin on her face and hands, which were colored a few shades darker from exposure to the sun. Her eyes were a dark, stormy green, like the color of the sea in the midst of writhing storm, ringed with fans of long, thick black eyelashes ( _dreamer’s eyes, her Nee-chan had always said_ ). Her face was angular, hardened, and a scar from a blade she’d been too slow to block at that bitch Usana’s house tugged her still full and thick mouth down into a semi-permanent sneer.

Her body was muscular, the front of it nicked and scarred by the marks that over a decade’s worth of hard, desperate living gave one. Despite the muscle and years of training, stubborn curvature remained, baby fat still clinging to her hips and behind, and her breasts were still full and round, the nipples dark pink and hard from the cold. She _tsked_ at her breasts, weighing the heavy rounds of fat in her hands, vaguely annoyed by the imposition the features her biological gender routinely gave her, and continued her inspection. The silvery blue scales covered most of the front and sides of her arms, extending to a point on each hand between the middle and ring fingers. Her legs were long and well formed, as muscular as the rest of her. The scales continued down her sides, curving over her hips and down to the tops of her feet.

She wondered what her back looked like. It had healed as best it could, though the Magic had been unable to wipe any of the scars away, as the nature of the whips had prevented that. But she couldn’t force herself to turn around, to see the scars for herself. Her legs simply refused to move.

Apparently she wasn’t quite ready to see those scars. Her hand inched over her shoulder, feeling slowly, while her other hand pressed against the small of her back. The skin there was hard and tough. She could feel the raised, scarred skin. It felt like strips of raised leather across her flesh, tough and strange beneath her questing fingers.

_-…there is pain, and terror and most devastatingly, the sting of bitter betrayal. Every crack of the whip against her back ignites pain that goes beyond the physical, because these are her friends, the people she lived with, the people she saw every day, the people she worked so hard to protect and help._

_And they laugh as she cries…-_

She sighed and began the tedious process of getting dressed.

* * *

“Um, Ciel?”

She turned her gaze from the window outside, still leaning against the cold stone wall. Chopper stood at the door, watching her.

“Mm?” she asked, feeling sleepy and stupid. It had been two days since they’d arrived at the castle, and Kureha certainly had wasted no time in helping her slowly peel away the layers of barriers that remained between her and her true power, slowly removing the fog that had dulled her thoughts and mind ever since Aratuck. The older Magus had also taken to teaching Kelly things about Magi, things she’d had no clue about, things she hadn’t learned but should have. The general history of their people, how to greet other Magi and the Elders of the different races Magi belonged to, and spells that every Magi learned early on.

 _I hadn’t even realized there were barriers keeping me away from my magic, much less anything else, like how some Daemons can fucking hypnotize humans and make them their slaves,_ she thought, rubbing a hand over her face. _Christ, will I always be so weak? So fucking worthless? So ignorant? The things Kureha’s teaching me, they’re for Magi_ children _. I should know these things. But I don’t. Gin told me I wouldn’t learn everything, that books and his teaching could only take me so far…But this fucking_ sucks _._

A hoof touched her knee. She looked down at Chopper, who smiled up at her.

“Your friends will be awake in about a day or two, Doctorine says. The orange haired girl will be just fine,” He said, gently hugging her leg.

Kelly blinked.

She… she hadn’t even been thinking about them. About the three humans who could have very well have _died_ while she whined and angsted about how little she knew as a Magi.

A tiny voice in her head said timidly _‘But, they wouldn’t have died, they’re the main characters-’_

 _But in the manga, Nami wasn’t a fucking Magus, there weren’t Daemons running amuck, and where the hell did this thing with the Magi come from? …_ she thought, and then sighed.

“…Sorry, Chopper, that’s great news,” she said, instinctively reaching down to haul the little reindeer into her arms. She carefully cradled him against her chest and sat on the windowsill, watching the snow fall to the ground in drunken spirals.

“Will you tell me a story, Ciel?” He asked after a time, squirming so she would sit him in her lap. He watched her with big, curious eyes, and something in her belly ached, but distantly.

_-…”’Ey, tell us a story, beautiful,” he says, purple eyes flashing merrily. The doctors had upped his medicine intake again, from the look of his slack mouth and bruised circles ringing his eyes. Lien curls up next her and giggled, gently poking her exposed knee. She would be leaving soon, to be with her family, and Kelly didn’t want to think about having to let her go. “Yeah, Kel! A story, a story! You always tell us stories when you come and visit, and you and Amber haven’t visited us in a long time.” And the two of them turn puppy-dog looks up at her, and Kelly feels a little easier, a little less broken…-_

Kelly swallowed painfully, and stroked Chopper’s head, preening a little on the inside when he leaned into the touch.

“In a land far, far away, there was a race of people called the Celts, ruled over by a goddess so beautiful she struck men dumb to see her ride by. She was called Rhiannon, which means great queen,” Kelly began, reciting the tale she’d learned as a child, the tale Amber had told her of as a child.

She hadn’t been able to play the part of storyteller in a long while, and it had surprised her to realize she had missed it, when Chopper had first come to her asking for a story.

 

"On a fine summer day, Lord Pwyll, a man of great standing among the Celtic peoples, took his men to a hill said to be magickal. It was claimed by one and all that if a man were to spend the night there, he would see a beautiful thing in the morning when he woke. Lord Pwyll knew, from the rumors of hedgewitches and the tales of the smallfolk, that the hill was said to be a favorite place of the great goddess herself..."

As she wove the story, Chopper hanging onto every word, she could almost pretend she was home again, with the fire roaring the hearth, holding her sister in her arms as she told her stories of the world's folklore, her parents just down the hall.

She could almost pretend everything was normal.

* * *

 **DATE:** _November 17 th (It’s been three days since we arrived at Kureha’s)_

 **MY LOCATION:** _Nami’s room_

 **PLACE:** _Drum…or is it called Sakura Island now? When the hell do they actually change the name?_

_Chopper’s freaking ridiculous. I mean seriously, I knew the kiddo was smart – anyone who read the manga or saw the anime could tell you that – but in real life he’s something else. He’s moving about his chemicals and filled beakers like a pro, muttering to himself and making all sorts of notations in his books, and I can’t make heads or tails of it._

_And I know I’m really not the brightest bulb in the box when it comes to book work (I still have trouble multiplying and doing some other basic maths, so yeah) but hell, even if I was this stuff would be flying over my head. Chopper’s a fucking genius, and better yet, he enjoys his work. The look on his face as he goes over his work is something else, and reminds me of how I get when I’m in the ocean. When I’m using my magic._

_Speaking of which, I feel fucking awesome. There are plenty of barriers between me and the core of my magic, as Kureha explained, but I have a ton more than I did now. I feel alive, awake, as though I’d been walking in a fog all of my life. Like I’d cut off a vital part of myself and it only now has been returned to me. I feel even better now than I did before Aratuck, before I came to this world._

_Who bound my magic? Why would they bind it?_

_It’s been an odd couple of days. Luffy, Nami, and Sanji slept longer than I expected they would. Their injuries were pretty bad, and apparently Luffy also caught something from that damned Little Garden, though he was able to fight it off better than Nami could._

_I can feel the magic in Nami, now. She’s sleeping to my right, as I sit in front of the roaring fire. Finally, the stench of death has left her. I know I should tell her something about it, or let Kureha tell her about it…no, I can’t take that chance. I’ll tell Kureha that I plan to train Nami later. She isn’t too strong, so her powers shouldn’t cause her too much grief. And she deserves better than to be taught by a clumsy, half-trained Magus like myself._

_Kureha’s taught me so much about Magi, things I couldn’t learn from books, or just didn’t know. Higher leveled Magi are generally agender or don't care very much about it, which was strange – and freaking awesome. It has something to do with how Magic itself has no gender, or it has many (I didn’t quite understand). But that’s only with higher leveled Magi, those who have mastery over three to four elements. Myself, I have only two and with vague control over earth and none at all over fire, so I will never be all that powerful. (But didn’t Kureha say something about that? Hm.)_

_I went into Sanji’s room earlier because my magic led me there. He breathed. He lived, and that was more comforting than it should have been. My magic wanted him. It wants him still._

_(Shit.)_

_Nami’s waking up!_

_I’ll write later._

_~KL_

* * *

She ran.

Ran and ran and ran, cursing her decision to wear heels and a short dress, even though they made her look really cute and made people underestimate her – which was the _best_ , especially when one was in her line of work. But right now it wasn’t exactly working out for her, now was it?

She stumbled, swearing as her shoe got caught in the exposed root of a dying tree. She yanked her leg hurriedly, only to stop, every nerve in her body freezing with rabbit-like terror as a dark, screeching laugh emanates from behind her.

 **“LOok, siSter! The liTtle pigGy iS stUck!”** The voice was strange, inhuman, flavored at the edges with a sliver of bloody amusement, vaguely, distantly male.

She shook with fear.

Another voice echoed the first, with only the vaguest hints of a feminine tone, but mirroring the first in the strangely toned words. **“YOu’re _riGht_ bRother! _ThAt’s_ noT _gOod_ for _iT_ , Is _It_?”**

The two voices laughed like nails on chalkboard, and she staggered to her feet, abandoning her shoes as she ran and ran and ran, not caring that her feet were bloody and scraped, not caring that she was stumbling her way through a fucking jungle (even though all the animals had scattered long ago), not caring that her partner was dead and those, those _things_ , had _eaten him_ (he’d screamed and screamed and there’d been this awful, tearing sound and then he’d just stopped), and those crazy monsters had made her Devil Fruit powers somehow _stop working_ , and she didn’t want to die.

**“MiSs _ValentIne_! WhEre _arE_ yoUUUUUUU?”**

She’d known exactly what they were ever since the Baroque Works Frontier agents had met. Hadn’t she heard the stories after all, of the monsters who could become human, who hid in the shadows and dragged off little children who got too close? She’d _known_ what the light-haired, almost painfully ordinary (but for those eyes, bored and crazed and _hungry_ ) man and woman were from the moment she’d seen them.

They could have easily been the Mr. 1 and Doublefinger pair, _easily_ , but that really hadn’t mattered to them. Only blood and death and destruction, and the Boss had given them both plenty of that. They’d all seen the _ruin_ those two left in their wake, or heard of it, whispered by the Billions and Millions in uneasy whispers, passed among themselves, trying to reassure each other that the Boss wouldn’t bring two monsters on board unless he could control them.

But no one could control monsters like them, and she wondered vaguely how the Boss had gotten these goddamn freaks to enter into a contract with him, and she knew the Boss had sent these monsters after them because they’d failed, failed to kill a bunch of stupid pirates and their pet Magus. And that knowledge burned deep inside, even as she staggered into a clearing surrounded by trees and realized there was no way off the island.

_Oh fuck, she was going to die._

For one crazy moment, as something slammed into her back, knocking her to the ground, as that same, awful laugh rang in her ears, she thought hysterically _Mummy certainly wouldn’t be pleased by her language, Mummy had raised her to be a proper lady, and she’d always been a proper lady, even though she could crush skulls with her legs and killed pirates for a living_ -

Then there was pain and an awful tearing and she _screamed_ and she could feel claws digging greedily into her back and blood spilling-

And then, blessedly, there was darkness.

* * *

They made a rather ordinary couple, sitting together in their room in the bowels of the ship. The man curled in the woman’s arms, purring sleepily, as content as a cat who’d just gotten a metric tonne of cream. And a couple canaries too, for good measure.

She smiled, running her fingers through his soft hair, wishing she could shuck her skin and convince her brother to shuck his, so she could fuck him _properly_ , but no. It would disturb their little minions (and her brother couldn’t exactly control himself), and their employer certainly wouldn’t like that. He’d gotten angry last time they’d revealed their true selves before humans who didn’t need to know (even though they’d left no witnesses, of course), and it was just more _convenient_ if they didn’t irritate their employer.

Her brother’s eyes opened, and he made a low noise in the back of his throat that he knew did _things_ to her, and she felt lust strain through her skin.

“Why didn’t you eat anything?” he asked. “I know you prefer dark meat, but you barely ate any of it, and you let me have all the light meat.”

She shrugged. “Was too sea-salty,” she said with a shrug, “And I ate earlier, with the minions. One of them made some delightful blood beef soup.”

He wrinkled his nose. “You always were odd.”

“I don’t much like salty food, and regular meat’s never been my favorite, and _that_ sort of meat has too damn much sea-salt in it,” she said.

He smiled at her after a brief silence, low and slow and amused. “Did you smell it?”

She grinned, and kissed him, biting his lip and savoring the pained gasp, the taste of his ink-black blood in her mouth, before pulling away. His eyes were no longer the pale, human imitations he wore before others, but a deep, bloody, mad red, the mirror of hers.

“The Magus?” she said with a laugh. “Oh yes, my love, I smelled them. With the pirates taking the princess back to Arabasta, the little color-worker told us. We’ll feast well, if they were right.”

It was, after all, why Crocodile had employed them in the first place.


	14. The Cherry Blossoms Are Falling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nami dreams and gets better, while Kelly watches and protects.

* * *

**NAMI**

_-…She is warm, but everything is so, so loud. She opens her eyes, and then everything is bright. She hears a voice that she thinks is her sister’s, soft and quiet, and safe, and then she looks up and sees dark blue hair framing a face with dark blue-green eyes brimming with tears. But this can’t be her sister’s, because gently feathering the edges of Nojiko’s face are feathers. Feather the color of Nojiko’s eyes. And she has never felt her sister like this, because something, **something** connects the two of them, like the currents of the ocean, but stronger. So much stronger._

_What’s going on?_

_Then she hears another voice. A man’s, tired and aching. Her sister gets up and walks a short distance, handing her over to the man, who Nami knows just as she knows her sister. She looks up into a…woman’s face…but wasn’t it just a man’s voice she heard? She has Nojiko’s eyes and Nami’s hair and feathers, and she is crying. Nami can hear her sobs over the roar of some crazed animal in the distance. Over the sound of screams and gunfire. Over the sounds of things crashing and breaking. It sounds like the day when Arlong came to Cocoyashi, but more. More._

_“I’m so sorry,” she says. “I wish I could keep you. I wish I could be a better parent. But I know someone good will find you.”_

_“Mama, I don’t want to forget!” Nojiko wailed through her own tears. “I wanna stay with you.”_

_A door opens._

_“Nahuatl, I must take them now if they are to escape.” A man’s voice. Sobbing harder now, the woman nodded._

_“Please, Calder…protect them. Get them to safety.” The woman pulled Nojiko close and touched her forehead. Nojiko sagged in the woman’s arms, unconscious._

_Nami cried out, feeling the connection between them grow dim and fade, and a figure picked her sister up from the floor. Then the woman touched her head, and everything went dark._

_So dark._

_It was so cold…-_

Nami’s eyes shot open and she rose to her elbows, breathing harshly, the ice pack that had been resting on her forehead sliding off with a wet thump.

She turned to her left, and looked out the window, raising her hand to protect them from the light.

She was alive. The fever that had plagued her waking moments and dreams for the past days, the agonizing pain that had wracked her limbs – it was gone, replaced by a bone-deep fatigue and the vestiges of the unnatural heat in her face and body.

What had she been dreaming about? She put a hand to her temple, but the vestiges of the dream slipped away like grains of sand in a sieve, leaving her with only the barest wisps of color, sound, and fear.

Nothing else.

* * *

Nami’s eyes bulged as the old woman’s scalpel pressed into her neck. Looking past the crag of a nose that hovered a scant inch above hers, Nami stared into a face that was as cold as the winds blowing outside the window, and into dark eyes that seemed to burn with a steely, measured madness.

This was not someone to mess with.

“The only time someone leaves my care is if they’re recovered,” Doctorine said with a harsh cackle that made the skin on the back of the younger woman’s neck prickle. “Or if they’re _dead_. You ain’t going anywhere for the next three days, _at least,_ so you’re goin’ to lay your ass back down and _not move._ We clear, girlie?”

“Doctorine, I’m pretty sure she gets the idea, now _back off_ ,” A voice from the doorway ordered, not sounding pleased at all.

The old woman immediately stood, tucking the scalpel into one of her pockets. Nami turned and saw Ciel standing there, a small leather-bound book in one hand, his pack in the other. He wore his normal attire, but oddly enough his hair was unbraided, falling in a waterfall of silky black to his waist. It gave a strange beauty to his normally hard face, and Nami was struck by an insane urge to run her fingers through the strands. He tucked the book into his bag.

“You’re too protective, little cobra,” Doctorine said, smirking, and Nami saw the man stiffen.

“And you’re too free with the blades. Shouldn’t they be keeping sharp things away from senile old hags like you? Y’might hurt yourself after all,” Ciel said, folding his arms over his chest and trying a smirk that sat wrong on his lips.

Tension made the air thick and heady, and there was an air of something territorial. Nami was forcibly reminded of a time many years ago on one of the islands she’d visited, of a mama bear and an alpha wolf bristling over territory.

The air thickened until Nami though she would choke on it, and the words tumbled out before she could stop them, anything to cut the tension.

“Ah, Ciel, do you need help braiding your hair?” She asked, and felt herself blush when that unnerving gaze landed on her. In the harsh light from the window, Ciel's eyes seem to blaze like specks of green fire.

Doctorine laughed, and just like that the air _eased_ , and the smile that quirked up Ciel's mouth was a great deal more genuine than the smirk he’d had.

“Why don’t you let the girl play with your hair, if that’ll keep her in bed,” Doctorine said with a smirk. “You can pretend to be princesses if you want,” and there was enough hint of a tease in the words to make the man twitch.

“How about y’go and take your old lady medicine, because you obviously need it, y’old bag,” Ciel retorted easily, and dodged the barrage of scalpels that embedded into the wall behind him. “Sheesh, menopausal much?”

Doctorine rolled her eyes. “Fucking brat.” She wandered over to a table on the other side of the room and cracked open a bottle of some sweet-smelling alcohol.

Ciel pressed the back of his hand to Nami’s forehead and grinned. “Well, at least you know your way around medicine. Feeling better, Nami-chan?”

Nami nodded, and made grabby fingers at Ciel's long fall of hair. It looked as soft as silk this close up, and finer than the clothes she’d stolen or murmured over in high-priced shops she could never afford to enter legally, and even the noblest ladies’ elegant dresses.

Ciel snorted, and turned around, sitting on the bed beside her. He handed Nami a couple of elastic ties and said “Knock yourself out, doll.”

Nami carded her fingers through Ciel's hair, cooing at the softness. It felt even _better_ than silk, she thought with glee, and began the process of weaving it into a tight braid. It was fairly simple. She remembered Bellemère-san teaching them how to braid, when Nojiko’s hair had been as long as Ciel's. Bellemère had sometimes liked having her hair braided too.

Her grip tightened as her eyes burned.

“Hey, hey, _easy_ there,” Ciel said, and when Nami realized she was pulling the man's hair, she loosened her grip.

“Ah, sorry,” she said, and continued braiding with steady hands.

“What’s up, doll?” the man asked, sounding ridiculously tender. Nami paused.

“…I used to braid…my sister, she had longer hair. And my, my mom, she…” The words tangled on her tongue. “She taught me how to braid.”

Nami felt a warm hand press against her side.

“I’d’ve liked to meet her,” Ciel said quietly, and Nami laughed.

If that burst of sound sounded more like a sob than a laugh, well, no one would say otherwise.

After a short period of time, Ciel said “I’ll go fix you something to eat after you’re done, if you’d like.”

“Yeah.”

* * *

**KELLY**

“ _CIELLLLLLLLLL_!”

Kelly blinked and turned, staggering as Chopper leapt into her arms

“Chopper, what-?” she asked, staggering as she tried to simultaneously keep his antlers from poking her in the eye, a hold on the bowl of chicken broth she’d whipped up for Nami, and from falling on her ass. For such a tiny thing, Chopper could pack a lot of a force into his body.

What the hell had gotten into him-

“MEAT!” A very familiar voice bellowed from down the hallway, and Kelly felt her lips pull back into an involuntary snarl. She fought to keep her claws from exploding out, and the strange bitterness she assumed was her poison surged behind her jaw.

She tasted hunger in the air, the ice-cold stone tang of the hallway unable to mask the acrid, agonizingly familiar odor of humans on the hunt and the shaking fear that coated Chopper’s warm earth musk scent. She shuddered, and managed to rein back the fury that threatened to consume her. She’d often been on the receiving end of that awful hunger and she didn’t like thinking about how often Chopper’s fear had been her own.

“Chopper, darlin’, would you take this to Nami?” she asked, and handed Chopper the bowl. “I’ll make sure these fucking morons don’t follow you.”

He nodded, sniffling.

“Go on then, sweetie,” she said, smiling, and after setting him down, shooed him off.

Her smile slipped from her lips as Sanji and Luffy appeared in her view, shaking off Gin’s and Shere’s calls.

_Leave me be. I have a lesson to deal out._

The cats quieted immediately.

“What the _fuck_ do you _idiots_ think you’re doing?” Kelly said, fighting to keep her voice calm. Sanji and Luffy skidded to a halt in front of her.

“C’mon Ciel, move! I want _meat_!” Luffy said, flashing her a grin that defied the laws of anatomy. It did nothing but piss her off even more, because she could still smell his hunger, and it made her stomach lurch unpleasantly.

“Move, you stupid scoundrel, Nami-san needs a bowl of warm venison soup to get better,” Sanji said, looking down his nose at her – even though the blond was at least five inches shorter than her.

“Nami doesn’t need anything, you pathetic, little, attention-starved dog of a man,” Kelly said blandly. “I made her a nice, light chicken soup, something that _won’t_ make her even sicker than she was. Are you really as stupid as you seem, blondie? If you had any sense in your pitiful little brain, or if you thought with something _other_ than your dick once in a while, you’d realize that Nami didn’t fucking want any god damn _venison soup_. Gods know after practically being in a coma for the past several days and eating nothing, _her stomach can’t handle it._ ”

Apparently she wasn’t as successful in keeping the rage from her face as she had hoped, because both the boys stepped away from her.

“What the hell is your problem?” Sanji asked.

“Ciel, if you want some meat, I’ll share with you!” Luffy said, blinking at her in confusion.

She could feel something snap behind her eyes, like a string that had been pulled beyond the breaking point.

Her hands snapped out, snaring both of the males around the neck and slammed them against the wall to her left.

“I will say this only once,” she hissed, her control fraying. “That reindeer is not meat. He is my friend, and if you ever go near him again, I will _eat_ **you**. Do you understand me?”

“What the _fuck-”_ Sanji choked out, his fingers scrabbling at the grip on her neck. Luffy was choking as well, her connection to the sea disrupting his natural defense against blunt force.

“That was not a question that required speech. A nod will do. Now, I will ask one last time, _do you two dumbasses understand me_?”

Two pairs of wide eyes met hers and in unison the two men nodded.

Kelly leaned back, letting her grip fall from their necks to the front of their shirts, and then, with a mighty heave, tossed them both down the hall and out the door.

She breathed quietly.

_(Mistress?)_

_I hate humans,_ she said, the words raw with pain and anger. _I really,_ really _hate humans._

The connection was silent, but for the feeling of warm fur pressed against her mind, the closest thing to a hug her Familiars could give her with the distance laying between them.

Kelly shuddered yet again, turned on her heel, and went in search of the comfort being among Nami, Kureha, and Chopper would bring her.

 _The comfort of being among family_ , something whispered in the back of her mind. She ignored it with the ease of long practice.

* * *

Kelly jerked from her trance when the sound of explosions rang through the castle. She’d taken to a private room to spend some time organizing her mindscape, to quiet the lingering fear that had turned her legs to jelly.

Not even the Highborn Daemon Lord she’d faced back when she was fourteen had stirred such fear in her belly. It was only humans who could scare her so badly. Humans were awful, awful creatures.

_-…“...the real heart-stopping evil was right inside the human mind,” her Mama says, reading from the threadbare book. Kelly curls up beside her, resting her head on the older woman’s broad thigh. It is sad, Kelly thought, that humans are so bad. Was it in all humans? Not in Mama or Papa or Nee-chan or Li or Ezra, surely._

_She thought about the man who’d made those foul comments towards her Nee-chan earlier that week, the way her Mama’s mother had mocked her father for being a “faggot”, and how those older, neighborhood kids had killed that little piglet they’d stolen from Old Man Donovan._

_And she thought she understood what her Mama had said.”…-_

She shook her head and stood. Wapol was here, then. She’d better find Nami, make sure the girl didn’t run into the big mouthed moron.

A woman’s scream interrupted her thoughts, and Kelly ran from the room in the direction of the sound.

She skidded down the hallway and threw open the door that opened onto the middle room with the spiral column. Freezing cold wind whipped past her, chilling her cheeks, but she paid it no mind, focusing instead on the three people standing on the show.

Luffy looked up at her and waved. Nami nodded.

The other man – who she assumed was Wapol - looked seriously demented. He was tall – only about a hand’s span taller than her, with purple hair that curled up in spikes out from under his strange animal hat, a long, slightly hooked nose, and metal covering what she could see of his jaw, cheeks, chin, and neck. Or maybe part of his face was actually made from metal? She’d never been too certain when she’d seen the show if the metal was just a covering or was actually a part of his face.

“Hi, Ciel! Are you feeling better?” Luffy called, as cheerful as ever. “You were right about the reindeer not being food! He’s going to be our nakama!”

Kelly blinked. Oh, so that had happened already? And that unabashedly apologetic tone in his voice made shame curdle in her gut. Perhaps she had…maybe she’d been a _tad_ too vicious?

She inwardly winced.

“Ah, well, that’s… that’s fine, then,” she said lamely. Then she turned her attention to Wapol before she did something stupid like blush.

“Who’s this idiot, then?” She asked, gesturing at the man, who glared.

“Do you know who I am, you impertinent fool?!” He yelled, hands on his hips. “I am the great and powerful-”

“Yeah, yeah, don’t give a damn,” she said, dismissing him and turning back to Nami. “You, miss, need to be in bed. Doctorine did a wonderful job, but you are still recovering, and being out here will not do you any good if you wish to be healthy again.” She vaulted over the railing and landed lightly on the snow. It crunched beneath her boots.

Wapol began ranting – something about weapons and ruling the world, how pitifully _cliché_ – as Kelly approached the other woman.

“Come on now, Nami-chan, back to bed with you,” she said.

“Ciel, I’m fine-” she began, only to stop when Kelly folded her arms over her chest. “Look, we need to get out of here before Doctorine gets back, all right? We can’t afford to stay here any longer than we have. We need to get Vivi to Arabasta!”

“I understand that, but it won’t help anything if you relapse on the way there, goose. We don’t have a doctor, which makes you getting better here all the more important. You’re the navigator, Nami. Something happens to you, we're all sunk,” Kelly said. Luffy nodded and rested his chin on Kelly’s shoulder.

Nami sighed.

“I lost the key!” Wapol yelled from behind them. All three turned to look at him.

“…The ex-fatass is still here?” Luffy asked, looking bewildered.

“The opening will be postponed,” Wapol said, and ran for the staircase.

“GET BACK HERE,” Luffy shrieked, and ran after him.

“So this is the key to the armory?” Nami asked, looking down at the small metal key she held in one hand. “I thought it was the key to the treasury…”

Kelly sniggered. “Nami-chan, you’re amazing, you know that?”

“Of course I am.”

“NAAAAAAAAAAAMIIIIIII-SWAAAAAAN!”

Kelly felt the smile slide off her face and her amusement leave her in a whoosh as Sanji crawled towards them on all fours. _So pathetic_ , something inside her snarled, even as something else shifted uneasily. She could taste the pain his injury still gave him, and _that_ made her want to howl to the moon like a wolf.

“Sanji-kun, you’re _crawling_. Are you injured?” Nami asked, kneeling down and gently touching his arms.

As Sanji’s eyes turned to hearts ( _and how the fuck was that physically possible?_ ) Kelly promptly stepped on his head, driving his face into the snow.

“Look, Nami!” she said as cheerfully as she could while Sanji squirmed and swore beneath her foot. “It’s a giant-ass cockroach. I should go find some pesticide.”

* * *

And so Luffy defeated Wapol.

The villagers who’d come to the mountain (and everyone else) were given yet another surprise, for Sara had – rather unexpectedly – gone into labor, and had given birth to a healthy baby boy, who she and a gravely injured Dalton named Dante.

As the villagers celebrated, and the injured were forced to rest in Kureha’s office (though Nami was undoubtedly planning their escape), Kelly had gone to sit in the quiet room that the new mother had been granted. Her bear – named Bjorn – curled up by her feet, one eye on his Mistress and her son.

Kelly watched the woman as she nursed her son, utterly content.

“You never really forgave me, did you?” she asked the other Magus wryly.

Sara turned in her direction, then laughed.

“No, not really. Was it that obvious?”

Kelly shrugged. “After I’d thought about it for a while.”

“If it’s any consolation, I don’t hate you,” Sara said, and turned her sightless eyes to the window.

“Hate’s a terrible thing, my Mama always said. Eats you up from the inside out,” Kelly said sagely, feeling dopey and drugged by the warmth of the room and the tiredness that had suddenly stricken her body.

She was so damned tired.

“Your mother sounds like a wise woman,” Sara commented idly.

The two of them sat together in the silence for a long, long time, each lost in their own thoughts, while the winds roared like a hundred thousand caged animals outside the window.

* * *

She stood to the back of the group, to the side, a little away from the rest of them, watching as the sky exploded and Chopper sobbed. In the distance, the mountain where the palace was had seemed to have turned into an enormous cherry blossom tree, gleaming bright and beautiful even in the bitter cold.

Tiny pink blossom snowflakes fell from the sky in lazy spirals.

Kelly looked at the pirates she’d found herself traveling with and sighed. Then she froze, something Luffy had said drifting through her mind.

 _-…“You were right about the reindeer not being food! He’s going to be_ **our** _nakama!”…-_

Why would Luffy have said something like that? Her fingers trembled as some emotion she couldn’t name bubbled in her chest, frothy and light, and so very, very dangerous.

_Our. Our nakama._

_(Could he have been talking about her, too?)_

…No. She shook her head. She was overthinking it. Luffy had obviously meant him and _Nami_ , and had used that pronoun to mean the two of them.

Obviously.

Of course.

Kelly sighed, feeling cold for reasons that had nothing to do with the winter wonderland around her.

And as the pirates watched the mountain bloom, the Magi turned her head towards the sea. If she closed her eyes, she could almost hear the blessed sea’s siren song. Longing beyond reason raged in her blood, a bitterly potent agony when paired with the loneliness that was always, always with her.

 _‘Mama, Papa, Beth, Alex…Lien, Henry, Nee-chan…I miss you so much. I have to get back to you. I have to,’_ she thought. _‘I can’t stand this. Hiding and running and pretending every single day. I can’t do this forever. I just can’t.’_

* * *

She waited patiently as power weaved from her hands into the cloud below, anchoring the enchantments in place for another thirty days. The nature of the ground here prevented any true protective spells being laid, but her mother had taught her well.

The young woman breathed in deeply, chasing away the thoughts of her long dead mother, who’d died so thousands of people could live, and shook her blond hair out of her eyes.

“They’re coming!” A woman’s voice called out as she pulled back, detaching herself from the flow of power, allowing the last shield to snap into place.

 _“Sit ventus cantare,_ ” she said, speaking the words to the spell that would bring the shields up. She did not pay any attention to those who gathered a respectful distance behind her. _“Sit aqua fluunt, sit terræ obstupuerunt…”_

She could feel them coming, their hot, stinking hunger for human flesh and life, their chittering, inhuman laughs, and their filth.

_“Et per gratiam deorum, et ignis æmulatio!”_

Power exploded through the air, finding the monsters and crisping them into ash as the men, women, and children behind her cheered. She dropped back, secure in the knowledge her people were safe, and that she would be caught before she hit the ground.

And sure enough, two brown-skinned, heavily tattooed arms caught her before she fell very far, and a very familiar, scowly face appeared before hers.

She smiled dreamily and he rolled his eyes.

“Thank you, Wiper,” she told her longtime friend and bodyguard.

The two of them watched as the monstrous Daemons - who had not been able to get away in time - writhing outside the shields died horribly, screaming like thousands of dying birds.

“Well done,” he told her. “Now sleep.”

And she did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The spell is supposed to mean something like: “Let the air sing, let the water flow, let the earth tremble, and by the grace of the Gods, let the fire rage!”


	15. in regnum harenam (In the Kingdom of Sand)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to Arabasta!

_-…”You look so handsome, Kel!” Agatha said, coming to a stop before her as Kelly entered the room, the redhead’s nurse a few steps behind, looking amused. Kelly grinned abashedly, running a hand over the tailored suit she’d bought for the dance that Hollyoaks Psychiatric Hospital and Physical Rehabilitation Center was hosting. It sat easily on her shoulders, giving any who saw her the impression of brawny shoulders, a muscled waist, and about fifty less pounds. The undershirt was a deep plum color that supposedly “set off her ravishing eyes”, or some such nonsense._

_Her mother’s stylist was a decidedly odd man, but he’d worked a virtual miracle._

_“Ah, but you look as pretty as a picture, Aggie,” she said, turning her attention to the girl decked out in a knee-length pink satin prom dress. “I’ll be the envy of everyone here, with the prettiest girl in this entire place on my arm.” Kelly bowed gallantly and offered the furiously blushing girl her arm. She didn’t notice Aggie gripping a little too tight, or the star struck smile the younger girl sent her way._

_They walked down the hallway, with Aggie chattering about all the preparations they’d had to do to get the hospital ready, and how excited everyone was. Kelly had been there for the early stages of the preparations, but she’d stopped coming when Nee-chan…_

_She bit her lip and fought back the dull, piercing agony. Was that a contradiction? Maybe, but that was the nature of the pain. Of the grief. Such sorrow._

_But she’d gotten out of bed and had gotten all dressed up for the dance. They’d both worked so hard to give their friends at the Center the prom that most of them would never have the chance to have. Nee-chan had wanted her to go, so she’d went, even though it felt like there was a hole in her heart._

_She breathed slowly and turned her head to Edward, Agatha’s nurse, a tall Irishman with sandy blond hair and a barrel-like chest._

_“It’s good of ye to be here,” he said in a quiet aside to her as he pulled open the door that would lead down to the cafeteria._

_“Amber said I should,” Kelly said, rubbing her nose._

_“Kel!” A very familiar voice called from the hallway to their right. Three people approached, dressed to nines for the party._

_Kelly stared and felt a newer emotion overshadow the grief. Something warm, like longing. Desire, maybe. She didn’t know._

_Henry and Lien stood there, a nurse behind them (Max, a skinny black man with gauged ears and a Loki-esque smile), smiling at her. Henry was resplendent in a dark white suit and blue undershirt that made his eyes shine like amethysts, and Lien, an iridescent dream in a floor length emerald green strapless gown that nipped into a tiny waist and seemed to flow out for miles._

_The words strangled in her throat as she stared at them both._

_She didn’t even notice when Aggie sighed and said irritably “I can’t even compete with those two in your eyes…”_

* * *

_Nurgleflurgle…_

“Let me sleep.”

_Flurglenurgleflargh…_

“Mother of God.”

_Flaaaaaaaaarghlenargleflurgh…_

“Jesus H. Christ, _fine_!”

Kelly rolled out of bed (careful not to step on Shere or Gin, who were dead to the world) and quickly got dressed. She opened the door and ghosted down the hall to the kitchen.

 _Flurglemurglenargh_ …

“Shut up, god damn it,” the Magus told her growling belly. “I’ll fix you something, just be quiet before you wake up the whole ship, all right?”

_Murgle…_

It had been four days since they’d left Sakura Island, and like always, Kelly had risen long before the rising of the sun, though it had been hunger that had awoken her this time.

She usually ate as little as was physically possible for her to maintain her muscles and to have the energy to fight, a habit from years on the run and being unwilling to trust any food that came from hands other than her own or she hadn’t tested with her own magic.

Her magic provided a great deal of the energy she needed, and it was often more than enough, but she hadn’t eaten a thing since the food Kureha had given her on Drum.

She entered the kitchen and flipped on the light. Pausing, she looked around the room, struck with nostalgia, loneliness, and a powerful wave of homesickness.

_-…”What’s it do?” she asks, waving the whisk around with all the grace of a drunken bear. Her father laughs, and catches her hand before she knocks something over, and takesthe whisk._

_Setting it in the bowl, he begins to move the whisk in a very fast circle, and to her amazed eyes, the cream inside begins to get light and fluffy._

_“Taste it,” her father says and spoons a little out. Kelly’s eyes widens as her mouth closes over the spoonful, and the man cackles as her eyebrows shoot into her hairline._

_“How’d you do that, daddy?” she asks excitedly, licking her lips to get the remnants of the meringue._

_“You want to learn?”_

_“Yeah!” He looks at her for a long moment, then smiles, his vivid green eyes lighting up with joy._

_“Well, my darling, come up here, and you’ll help me pour the pie filling for starters.” He pulls over one of the stools the surround the island in the middle of their enormous kitchen and sits her on it._

_His hands firmly cupping hers, he helps her pour the mousse into the pan…-_

Tears pricked at her eyes, and she knuckled them away as she moved to the sink.

She had to leave soon. She _had_ to. Her parents…Gods, what were they thinking? Did they think she was _dead_? She was her parents’ only child, the only child they were ever likely to ever have. She bit her lip, remembering what her mother had told her during one of her lowest moments _-…“If you ever died, your papa and I would likely follow you soon after,”…-_ and shuddered. She always loved her parents, and even though she’d failed them so many times, she knew they loved her more than words could ever express.

What was her absence doing to them?

She missed the countless evenings spent in her mother’s library, reading and re-reading her mother’s thousands of books until her eyes blurred with her mother in the armchair beside her. She missed the hardwood floors she and her mother had worked to put in every room of their house, sweaty and bruised and swearing at each other when things went wrong and laughing after. She missed her dad’s cinnamon pancakes that he made when she was feeling bad or down or ill, or even for no real reason at all. She missed the way he laughed when she made her sarcastic quips, or when she acted out her latest assignment from theater class.

 _Fuck_. She missed them so, so, _so_ much.

What about her friends? Did they think she’d run away?

_Beth had just started to forgive her, too._

She closed her eyes, took several shuddering gulps of air, and then rolled back her sleeves so they wouldn’t get in the way.

Pancakes would be a good thing for breakfast.

* * *

She smelled him before she heard him. Cigarette smoke, spices, human sweat, and something earthy that made her heart roll in her chest and an involuntary smile curve her lips.

“What the _hell_?”

She turned – thanking God her sleeves were pulled down – and grinned at a dumbstruck Sanji, who was watching her as though she’d grown another head. The stack of pancakes on the plate beside the stove was two feet high and growing.

“Pancakes,” she told him.

“I can see that, you shitty bastard, but _why_?” The insult seemed almost fond.

She shrugged. “Because pancakes.”

His eyebrow twitched. “But why did you _make_ them? How did you make them? And why did you use _my damned kitchen_ to make them?”

She paused, savoring the tang of frustration that tinted his scent. “…Pancakes,” she finally said, and mentally crowed as Sanji flung his hands up to the ceiling in a gesture of _Fuck it, I give up_ , and moved closer. He was about three inches shorter than her – speaking of which, she’d grown a _lot_ past the normal height she’d had back home and she seemed to just _keep on growing_.

“Want some?” She asked, gesturing to the pile. “I made more than I could possibly eat.”

She turned back to the stove as Sanji moved closer, nervous anticipation coiling in her gut. Sanji was going to eat _her_ cooking, holy _fuck._ The master chef of the Straw Hats, one of the best goddamn cooks _in all of the entire Grand Line_ , was going to eat _her_ food. The cook she’d admired for _years_ was going to eat her food.

Kelly thanked God that she’d always been such a stellar actor, because it was certainly coming in handy now, when she was on the verge of dropping to her knees and screeching _SENPAI NOTICE MEEEEEE._

She still had her thrice-damned dignity, and she would hold onto it with all her strength.

It was so easy to make fun of Sanji – he was a female-obsessed, overly chivalrous, transphobic super pervert (and wasn’t that a sentence for the ages) – but in this arena he was flawless. She’d tasted his food, after all. The man was a damned _genius_ when it came to edibles.

It meant the world to have him try her cooking, especially a recipe that’d been passed to her from her own father.

A pleased noise came from behind her, and she fought down the stupid grin that threatened to crack her face in half. _Success!_

“This is good, really good,” Sanji said, sounding insultingly surprised. “Where’d you learn to make it?”

“My dad. He taught me everything he knew,” Kelly said with a chuckle. “My first job was as a line cook in his restaurant,” she said, noting his raised eyebrow.

“You worked in a restaurant?”

Kelly shrugged. “Ay, for a long while, too. Only stopped when…” She blinked.

Why _had_ she stopped? She couldn’t remember a singular incident that had prompted her stopping her work at _Atop the Mountain_.

…No, she _could_ remember why she’d stopped working at the restaurant. At first she simply hadn’t had the time as Amber had gotten sicker and sicker, and she’d fallen for Lien and Henry. And after all that...she’d spent her days alternating between the Center, her sister’s bedside, and spending time with Beth and Alex.

Then she’d had her heart broken when Amber had died and then again when Lien had left and Henry leapt from that bridge.

It had taken Beth and Alex weeks to pull her out of the funk she’d sunk into, _months_ before she could even enter a kitchen without bawling her eyes out. The grief of it had scoured her lungs and heart.

She looked down at the pancake in the skillet and breathed through her nose, the luster of cooking fading as she thought about the last time she’d cooked these pancakes.

_-…She grunts as Mina’s bare body collides with her back, warm breasts pressed tight up against her shoulder blades. Mina’s arms curl around her neck as her ankles hooked around her thighs._

_Kelly smirks, adjusting to the added weight with little trouble as she set the last pancake on the platter._

_“Did you make me pancakes, love?” Mina’s says, her voice smoky and soft from sleep._

_“Of course I did, you crazy wench,” Kelly says and cuts off a small piece to feed her, laughing as the blond woman groaned appreciatively at the taste._

_“Oh, by the Gods, darling, you are master at cooking,” she moans._

_Kelly leaned back into her embrace._

_“This day’s starting out so well,” she says with a laugh and Mina smiles against the skin of her neck…-_

She set the pancake down on the platter and sighed, only to blink when Sanji rolled up his sleeves and nudged her aside.

“You really think Luffy’s going to be content with just that? And we have a whole crew to feed beyond him,” Sanji said. “If you were really a line cook, start frying up some bacon with the pancakes.”

“And scrambled eggs?” She asked, going to the fridge, feeling the excitement return.

“Of course.”

As even more delicious smells began to drift on the air and the two of them worked together as easily as she’d once done with her father, Kelly was struck by the thought that this was nice, even as she alternated between flirting outrageously with the blond and making fun of him while he swore at her, his cheeks reddening.

It really was.

* * *

She was awoken by a terrified scream that reverberated through her mind like a siren.

_:MAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMA!:_

She fell out of bed, crashing to the ground with a sickening thump, the blankets tangled around her legs, her jacket trapping her arms behind her back.

 _(Shere Khan, what-?)_ Gin had been flung off in her impromptu exodus from the bed, but he had heard the tigeress’s scream as well, struggling to emerge from under the blankets. _(Where are you?!)_

_:They’re going feed me to the fish Mama! HELP!:_

Forgoing shoes, stopping only to check that her scaly bits were adequately covered, she bolted out the door. By the time it cracked against the wood paneling that lined the hallway, she was already down the hallway, up the stairs, and rocketing through the kitchen.

The door that led to the deck flew open with an almighty crash, startling a shriek from Nami and Vivi. Kelly ran past them, barely throwing her hands out in time to catch herself from crashing into the railing.

Her head whipped around, searching, and promptly narrowed in on the two sitting over the railing, fishing rods in hand. Furious hissing and meowing came from over the side of the ship and- _no._

They wouldn’t fucking _dare._

_:MAMAAAAAAA!:_

Everything went white. She was vaguely aware that the sound that came from her throat could just barely be classified as human, and that she was over the railing in a heartbeat. But after that?

She wasn’t conscious of anything else until Zoro roared in her ear, _“Stop!”_

The order was like a bucket of ice being dumped over her head. She felt comprehension return gradually, in the realization of the wind whistling through the air, the paralyzing silence that held everyone in its grip, the fear-sweat tang coming from Usopp and Luffy, and the soft meow coming from the tied up cat laying on the deck, still attached to the two fishing poles. Zoro’s arms were curled around her neck and waist like steel bands.

She breathed unsteadily, and snarled “Get the fuck off me, Roronoa.”

“You back?” He asked instead of letting her go. Fury spiked down her spine.

She slammed her heel into the green-haired man’s Achilles’ Heel, and with a grunt, he loosened his grip enough for her to slip free. Her hair slipped over her shoulders as she knelt and quickly untied the rope wrapped around Shere Khan’s middle. She picked up the trembling cat and cradled her to her chest.

“Sheesh, Ciel, why’re you so angry? We were just trying to get some food!” Luffy protested, and there was another feeling that replaced the quiet, like the air itself had gasped.

Kelly turned and looked the straw-hatted boy directly in the eyes. She was pleased to see him recoil.

“It is only because you two are complete and utter fucking morons that I have not killed you. So do yourself a favor, _boy_ , and _shut the fuck up_ before I decide otherwise _,_ ” she said as calmly as she could manage.

Then she turned on her heel and walked back to the upper deck, Chopper practically leaping off the ship to get out of her way.

The Magus could feel nine pairs of eyes fixed on her back as she went, gently soothing the shaking cat in her arms.

As she walked by Vivi (who instinctively flinched) and Nami, she said quietly, dully “Let me know when we arrive at Arabasta, please. I’ll be in my room.”

When she was back in her room, she set Shere Khan on the bed beside Gin, who immediately started purring and washing the shaking tiger’s ears, then sat with a thump.

“ _Shit_ ,” she whispered to herself, resting her head in her hands..

What was she _doing_? Had she lost all of the sense in her brain? She’d forbidden Shere Khan and Gin both from taking their adult forms without her permission, and it had nearly gotten Shere _eaten._

Her hands curled into fists, and in that moment she hated Luffy like nothing else. The arrogant, piggish, selfish _little boy_ hadn’t even thought once about using her baby girl as bait. Hadn’t she been clear that her cats were _off limits_? Hadn’t she been clear before that she loved her cats beyond anything else?

But, then again, Vivi loved Carue, and yet Luffy and Usopp hadn’t even blinked before using the princess’s pet as bait in the anime, had they?

She breathed slowly, trying to dispel the raw anger that had blanked the world out, and lay on her side so she could stroke Gin and Shere both.

 _:Love you, Mama:_ The tiger said sleepily.

“You two,” she said, and two pairs of feline eyes looked up at her, even as she stared at the runic symbol on the wall that denoted absolute silence. Her hand moved automatically, stroking both cats as she spoke.

“If something like that happens again, defend yourselves. I don’t care what you must do, who you must maul, but if Daemon or human alike ever tries something of that nature with you, you have my wholehearted permission to rip them apart,” she said, coldly calm now.

“Even if it’s one of the Straw Hats, Mistress?” Gin asked, watching her with unreadable eyes.

She paused, then gently scratched under Shere’s chin.

“ _Especially_ if it’s one of the Straw Hats,” she said, eyes distant. “You are my only true friends in this thrice-cursed world. The Straw Hats are just a pirate crew I’ve temporarily shacked up with. If it comes down to a choice between you or them, you two will win every time.”

 _I can never forget that,_ she thought, as the smell of sulfur eventually wafted past her nose.

_-…she screeched as she scrambled away from the advancing tigers, swearing at Gin in every language she knew…The tiger cub was soft and warm in her arms, and looked up at her with such trusting eyes...they curled up on either side of her, enormous bodies shielding her tired one from the harsh winter night, and gratefully she slept…they cradled her between them as she wailed her grief to the heavens, rocking her gently as she cursed God for taking away the only person who’d ever loved her…-_

* * *

She’d wandered off to find some clothes – not trusting Sanji in the slightest to pick something out - and had promised to meet up with the rest of the Straw Hats later. She’d half expected Nami to insist she stay behind for fear Mr. 3 would spot her, but surprisingly no protest had come from the orange-haired beauty.

Kelly looked up at the sun and sighed, Gin and Shere asleep in the Sack. (They could sleep in the bag, in a sort of stasis, protected from all harm, whenever they wished.) Her dark mood had exhausted them as much as it exhausted herself.

The entire crew (even Luffy) had been on tenterhooks around her ever since they’d reached Arabasta. She couldn’t blame them, of course. She’d turned her fury on them, shown just how easily she could kill any one of them, including their captain…small wonder they feared her.

Even _Chopper_ had flinched when she’d passed him.

She ground her teeth, fighting the sting of tears. _Suck it the fuck up, Lewis!_ She ordered herself. _You’ve made your damned bed, and now you get to lie in it, so don’t be complaining about the rocks under it._

She turned down an alley, and paused, seeing three enormous men standing over a smaller figure on the ground. The men were interchangeable with any low-life thug one could find on the more “civilized” islands in any part of this world – tall, muscular, tanned, heavily tattooed, and bristling with weapons that dripped blood. Two guards lay dead around them.

But it was the woman on the ground, a tiny, squat woman, covered in bruises, who drew her attention. She was dressed like any well-to-do merchant, her robes a pleasing and light combination of silks and linens that flattered what curves she had. The brutes had ripped what jewels had adorned her off long ago – Kelly could see the raw spots on her arms and holes in the cloth where’d they ripped bracelets and rings from her flesh and clothes alike.

She sighed and made to walk away. The greed of humans was never-ending.

“You stupid old bitch, thinking you could walk around here like us humans!”

Kelly’s head snapped up. _What_?

“We’ll fetch a fine price on the slave market for a woman with wings, even if it’s an old bag like you,” the middle one, with a ring dangling from his nose, said with a leer.

The one closest to her grabbed the woman by her arm in a painful grip and hauled her off the ground. As the elderly woman yelled in pain, Kelly could see a faint edge of light gold feathers on her arm, and tasted the even fainter scent of Magic that clung to the woman, gentling the foul taint of money-greed, something foul, and sweat that was the mens’ smell.

 _Well,_ she thought, with a sudden thrill of bloodlust. _This is perfect! I needed to spill some blood, and what better way to do that than by killing some stupid humans?_

She smiled cruelly.

The humans never saw her coming.

* * *

The woman (who refused to tell her why she was living so close to humans) was named Aveline, meaning _little bird_. Fitting, for the gray haired woman had the energy of a tiny bird herself, constantly flitting about her shop, cheerfully chattering at Kelly, who sat in her underclothes in the back of her shop, comfortable in her nakedness as she could only be with another Magi.

“Oooh, you must try this on!” Aveline “Call me Ave, dearie!” cooed, handing her a pile of cloth.

Kelly grinned. “ _Amici mei_ , my friend, I can’t wear these. I’ll need hardy clothes, ones that can survive a long trek through the desert, and cover every inch of my skin. I’m walking with humans, and pirates at that. I’ll need the covering.”

Ave pouted. “You have a point…well, if you try this on and let me take a picture for future reference, I’ll give you a full set of desert gear for no charge!”

Kelly blinked, then sighed. “All right, fine, hand it here.”

Ave cheered, and promptly handed the girl the clothes. “Now, go change, so I can take a quick sketch of you! You’re so beautiful, and your _scales!_ So gorgeous.”

“I have to leave soon, _amici_ ,” Kelly gently reminded the woman, trying not to blush at the compliments. Ave tutted at her.

“Yes, yes, I’m well aware, dear. I’ve a deft hand with a pencil, though and it’ll not take more than a few minutes.” She shooed the other Magi behind a large screen. “I’ll be out in the front when you’re done!”

Kelly sighed, cursing her affection for older ladies, and stepped behind the screen. She laid the robes over a stand and eyed them critically.

The robes consisted of a floor-length, sleeveless, scoop-necked, flowing underrobe made of a soft, dyed cotton the color of an ocean, with bands of white and green embroideries at the hem and neck, drawing attention to the shadow between the wearer’s breasts. It was girted at the waist with a belt of gold cloth sewn with the same green embroideries. Over it went a sheer silk overrobe the same color and length as the dress, with long, wide sleeves embroidered at the hems, collar, and cuffs the same as the dress.

She let her hair fall down her back, free of her normal braid, and slipped the golden cuffs over her wrists, reveling in the feel of the fine jewelry against her skin, then tied her mass of hair back with the golden band. She left the slippers off her feet, enjoying the feel of the polished wood beneath her callused soles.

The silk made such a pleasing sound against the floor that she indulged herself, spinning about to hear that utterly decadent sound again.

“Mama!” Shere and Gin had come out of the Sack she’d sat on a chair by the wall. Shere’s eyes were bright. “Mama, you’re _beautiful_!”

She laughed – well, it was more like a giggle, which she swore always happened to a person in skirts. It had been many years since she’d had the time or notion to do such a thing.

It was fun.

“Why, thank you, darling!” she chirped. Then she grinned at Gin.

“Your thoughts, my friend?” she asked the silent cat. He watched her with dark eyes.

“Exceptional, _dominai moro_ , my Lord,” he whispered. She stared down at him, wondering where the new title had come from. There was something like reverence in his eyes, something that made her turn away in embarrassment.

She ghosted out, the cats following along.

“I have to admit, I’ve never even heard of-Oh, dearie, how splendid!” Ave had cut herself off with her exclamation of delight as she emerged into the front room and looked to the left.

Kelly’s heart leapt into her throat as she spotted the tall man standing in front of the table where Ave took care of the money exchanges, holding a _very_ familiar wanted poster in his hand.

He wore a pair of worn black culottes, belted around his trim waist by an orange belt, a pair of sturdy, short, black leather boots. Atop a head of shaggy black hair was a familiar orange panama hat with a band of dark red beads wrapped around the base that matched the beads around his neck.

But Kelly’s attention was focused on tattoo visible on the man’s arm. In curvy writing were four letters, an A, an S crossed out by an X, then a C and finally an E.

“Hello there,” Portgas D. Ace said, his eyes flicking up and down her body in blatant male appreciation, his lips curved up into the smile that had always made her heart thump unsteadily in her chest.

“Hello to yourself,” she returned, her voice a husky rasp in the still air in the shop. She vaguely noticed Ave sketching at the table, eyes focused.

“Okay, now, get closer!” Ave commanded, and leapt off the chair. With surprising strength, she hauled the two closer. Kelly held out a hand to stop from ramming into Ace’s chest, and gasped as her bare skin connected with his chest.

There was a flash of something, like a jolt of electricity that shot through their connected flesh, only ten times hotter, ten times more visceral than any bolt of lightning. Kelly gasped with shock and arousal, looking a scant inch up into eyes that had darkened with harsh, wild lust.  Her nipples had tightened to the point of pain, and she felt an unbearable warmth between her legs. His hand curved around her waist, pulling her close, so that there was barely a hand’s-span of space between the two of them.

The electricity bound them together for several, aching moments, the two of them unable and unwilling to move from the other.

“ _Excellent!_ ” Ave’s cry broke the spell, and slowly the two parted. “Oh, you two make such a wonderful couple! This will make an amazing portrait!”

Kelly only barely noticed the elderly woman’s words, eyes still on the Devil Fruit user. She nodded vaguely when the woman said she would get together some clothes appropriate for fighting and traveling the desert. She was only really conscious of the dark-eye man’s hand still pressed against her waist, feeling it as though there were no clothes between it and her flesh.

“Who are you?” Ace’s hoarse voice asked, and she laughed, a slow and soft roll of sound. She took the man’s hand off her waist and pressed it against her cheek.

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that question?” she asked the man.

She realized, as Ace chuckled and a very familiar warmth tugged at her gut, that she’d just fallen very, very hard for a dead man walking.

Wonderful. Wasn’t that just her lot?

* * *

She gagged, struggling not to throw up for the pain as she pulled the blanket tighter around herself.

Cecelia nuzzled her where she lay on the bed, body aching from the beating. It was agonizing for her Familiar, to be unable to come to her aid during the punishments her Master beat into her bones whenever she did something wrong.

“I’m sorry, my darling,” she said shakily, stroking the black scales. “I’m sorry you have to feel my pain.”

“It’s not right,” the dragon grumbled, furious. “He shouldn’t beat you. He’s your husband and you’re the mother of his heir! He shouldn’t hurt you at all.”

She rested her feverish forehead against the crook of the dragon’s neck.

“It’s all right, Cece,” she whispered. “He has every right.”

“No he doesn’t,” Cecelia said petulantly.

“Mother!” She heard the quick patter of her son’s feet across the wood floor, and managed to turn herself to her side. The little blond boy knelt beside her, eyes wide.

“My heart, what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be with Auntie B?” she asked, dragging his gaze away from her visible bruises.

“He did this, didn’t he?” The boy asked.

“Darling…”

The boy shuddered with fury. “Why does he always hurt you, Mama? Why is Father so mean?”

She reached up a hand and pulled him close, feeling the first of many sobs shake his frail shoulders.

“Why is Father such a monster?” he whispered into her neck.

Like always, she had no answer.


	16. I Can't Walk Among the Stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _It's a hard thing, to fall for a man doomed to die._
> 
> Ace and Kelly make a strange pair.

* * *

Ace gently stroked the silvery blue pattern of scales as the Magus quivered. She wasn’t used to such intimacy from someone else, _especially_ from a human. Even Mina hadn’t paid so much attention to her scales. She’d tolerated them, at most.

“I met one of your people in the New World,” Ace said quietly. He’d caught her arm when she’d tried to hide it after her scales had been exposed. “Saved my life, he did. I’d seen mermaids and mermen of all types before, but I’d never seen any who could match him in beauty. Is that a thing of your people’s race?” He asked, and there was honest curiosity in his eyes. “Beauty beyond compare?”

“…You’re very good at flattery,” Kelly got out once she’d managed to untwist her tongue. Ace’s eyes – dark as obsidian – sparkled with amusement.

“Why thank you. But that’s not what I meant to say. You _are_ beautiful, and saying something so patently obvious is as much flattery as saying the sun is bright,” Ace said rather nonchalantly. “What are you doing in the desert of all places?”

“Traveling to the New World,” Kelly said, accepting the pile of clothes Ave handed her. “And what’s the second captain of Whitebeard’s fleet doing here, if we’re going to be playing twenty questions?”

Ace’s face went dark. “Looking for someone who killed one of my crewmates. You heard of a guy named Blackbeard, by any chance?”

Kelly looked at Ace, studying the man, wondering if she should tell him. She liked Ace, but she hadn’t interfered at all so far in the story (at least, not with any lasting consequences). But she could feel something strange in her heart, as though she was standing at the middle of a crossroads, between a road she knew all too well and a road shrouded in mystery.

“I might,” she said quietly, and his eyes locked onto hers. “I’ll tell you what I know, but I’ve gotta get dressed and get back to the pirates I’ve been traveling with. Wouldn’t want to get left behind, after all.”

“Who are you traveling with? Most of your race wouldn’t go near humans if you paid them all the gold in the world,” Ace asked as she turned to head into the back room.

“The Straw Hat pirates,” Kelly said, watching him out of the corner of her eye. He stiffened.

“ _What?_ ”

Kelly was careful to keep her face neutral, only a little bit curious as she turned around.

“Well, yes. Do you know them? To the best of my knowledge, they’re not a very well-known crew yet.”

A grin spread across his face like the rising of the sun, and the Magus felt her voice strangle in her throat.

“Monkey D. Luffy’s my little brother. D’you think you can show me where he is?” Ace asked.

 _What the fuck are you doing_? A little voice in her mind screamed in fury. _Weren’t we supposed to not get involved? Now you’ve fallen head over heels for a rutting human who’ll fucking **die** because his father was King of the thrice-damned Pirates. He’s supposed to die, remember?! He dies so Luffy can become stronger, and so Sabo’ll get the Mera Mera no Mi._

_Don’t you remember?_

“Of course I can,” she said with a smile of her own. As she left the room, she noticed Shere Khan and Gin both twining around Ace’s ankles, purring fiercely. She smiled as the brawny young man knelt down and began to pet them.

 _‘Bugger Fate,_ ’ she thought as she hurriedly got dressed. _‘Bugger Fate and bugger inevitability. Ace doesn’t deserve to die. He doesn’t.’_

* * *

She felt her back straighten as the two of them got closer to where she’d left the Straw Hats. She’d forgotten that they certainly hadn’t parted on the best of terms.

“Ah, Ace?” she asked.

“Mmhm?” Ace replied, rubbing Shere’s neck from where she lay draped over his shoulders.

“Don’t mention my scales or my gender to your brother or the others, okay? They don’t know and I’d prefer they never found out,” The Magus said quietly, her hands clenching into fists.

Ace blinked at her. “But isn’t he your captain?”

She glared up at him for a few moments before turning away.

“No. He is not,” she said coldly.

Ace, Gods all bless him, let the subject drop after that.

The sounds of battle came from up ahead, a harsh clang of vibration carrying on the air, and she cocked an ear towards it. Ace watched her, interested.

“Hear something?” He asked and she nodded.

“Aye. Your brother’s run into a Marine with smoke powers and is having a helluva time in throwing him off,” Kelly said, and Ace smirked.

“Well, I can’t be having that, now can I?” He smirked and held out a hand. “Wanna beat the shit out of some Marines, beautiful?”

Kelly cackled at that, then held a hand over her mouth in faux mockery.

“But how do I know you can… _ahem_ , keep up with me, big boy?” she flirted back unashamedly. “I _do_ have standards when it comes to those I go walking with.”

“Is that what they’re calling it these days?” Ace asked as the two of them began to run towards the sound.

Kelly laughed and laughed and laughed and tried not to show how homesick she was feeling.

* * *

She had seen it on the TV and she’d seen it in the book. She knew Ace was a commander of Whitebeard’s army, second only below Marco the Phoenix and Whitebeard himself. She knew he was strong.

But it was one thing to see it on the screen and yet another thing _entirely_ to see it in person. To hear his roar of “ _HIKEN!”_

To see the wave of fire smash into the Billions’ ships, crumpling them into ash like so much wet paper before his power. To hear the terrified, oh so brief screams the Baroque Works agents were allowed before they were eaten up in a split second by the flash fire.

To feel the immense rush of heat against her cheeks, her braid being blown back by the shockwave.

 _:That’s a lotta fire, isn’t it Mama?:_ Shere Khan, her voice dazed, and if Kelly wanted to be honest, she was in a little better state than her Familiar.

 _It is, darling_ , she whispered in her mind. _That certainly is a_ lot _of fire._

Her fingers trembled against the railing as she watched the fire consume what remained of the Billions’ ships.

 _(Well, I’m certainly impressed.)_ Gin’s voice was vaguely shocked in her mind. _(I doubt even She would disapprove of someone as powerful as him, even though he’s one of the Cursed. Well done_ indeed _, Mistress)_

Later she would think about the meaning of those alarming words. But for now her attention was focused on the man who leapt back onto the railing, and was smiling so sweetly down at her.

“Does that meet your standards?” he asked.

She blinked up at him for a few moments before realizing what he meant.

And then she howled with laughter, clutching her sides as they began to ache.

“You son of a gun, of course it did,” she said.

* * *

**NAMI**

He’d _laughed_.

It had surprised them all how easily the dark man got along with Ace, Nami thought with a sigh as she spared a glance at the Log Pose, though it wasn’t strictly necessary. It gave her comfort, was all.

Ciel had laughed so joyfully, so warmly, so _openly_ when Ace had flirted with him and had more than returned the favor. Nami sighed and rubbed her face. He’d never been that way with any of them. He looked at Ace like…like…like she herself would look at an enormous statue made from gold. With affection and the tiniest hint of _this can’t be real_ and _someone’s going to take this away from me, so I better grab onto it fast before they do._

Ciel had smiled, and it had been so beautiful that Nami had almost fallen in love. Why did he never act that way with them?

- _…the door crashed open beside them, and both of the girls let out shrieks of shock as crazy-eyed Ciel slammed into the railing. His hair was unbraided, roughly tangled. He must have come straight from bed, then._

_He looked around, then his eyes narrowed on Luffy and Usopp, fishing at the railing, and it occurred to Nami then that perhaps letting the two boys use Shere Khan as bait had not been the smartest thing in the world._

_Then Ciel **roared** with fury, a deep, bestial sound that made her bones rattle and the hair stand up on the back of her neck, and he was over the railing, heading towards the two boys below. Nami was frozen where she stood, even as Zoro bolted to his feet when Ciel grabbed Luffy and Usopp by the necks._

_His normally handsome face had twisted into a grotesque mask in his fury and he was snarling, snarling like an animal would, and all Nami could remember in that moment was seeing Arlong’s face in one of his rages, when he’d torn apart a man from another town in front of them all._

_And it was terrifying beyond words…-_

Nami rubbed her face again.

Ciel had quite literally gone mad when he’d seen what Luffy and Usopp had done. But…there had been grief in his eyes. And when he’d calmed down, Nami had seen the betrayal and the utter, utter fear as his trembling hands clutched the cat to his shoulder.

Nami wondered if the man knew he’d been shuddering as he walked past, whispering “I’ll protect you” to his cat with the desperation of a man stranded in the desert for weeks.

Nami sighed as they began their trudge through the desert, Ace and Ciel chatting amiably at the rear of their group.

What in the hell were they going to do?

* * *

**Meanwhile, at the city of Rainbase….**

“How goes it?” A man’s voice, deep and almost sultry, filtered through the air to the woman standing before the window. A creature that looked much like a crocodile lounged in the shadows near her, eing her carefully.

“I have had no difficulties. 200 of the Billions are on standby in Nanohana, and well over 400 of the Thralls have also been stationed where they would do the most damage. Mr. 2 along with Miss Mother’s Day and Mr. 6 have been recalled.” The woman smiled as the water rippled in the wake of some enormous beast’s passing outside the window. “Miss Mother’s Day reported they were successful in their mission and would like to be known as Miss Valentine and Mr. 5 now. They have news that Princess Vivi is in the care of the pirates who defeated Mr. 3 and his partner, and that if our plans are to progress, that the pirates must be eliminated immediately.”

“Where are they now?” The man asked again, taking a long drag of his cigar.

“The pirates?”

“No.”

“Mr. 5 and Miss Valentine will be meeting with the rest of the Officer Agents at the Spider’s Café. They… have their orders not to kill any of the others.”

“Very good.”

“It’s past six already. They should be meeting by now.”

* * *

**The Spider’s Café**

**8 o’clock**

“So you wish to die.”

The air was thick with the heat that would plague those who lived in Arabasta for well into the night for months to come. It was doing nothing to calm any of them down, Paula – who was better known as Miss Doublefinger – thought with a sigh as she threw out a hand before Mr. 1, much less this testosterone pissing match the two men were indulging in.

They had other things, more _important_ things to be doing than fighting amongst themselves.

“Stop this, Mr. 1,” she said.

“Get out of my way, Miss Doublefinger. I’m going to kill him,” her partner said, his face as stoic as ever. Only someone who’d known him for a long while could tell the furrowing of his brow was as close as he ever got to erupting in rage.

Mr. 2 was swearing from where Mr. 4 had pinned him to the ground as Miss Merry Christmas looked on.

Miss Doublefinger spared him a look of disgust before saying “Will you calm down Mr. 2? It’s 8 o’clock and all the designated Agents are here-”

“Not all of them, perhaps. Were you going to start _without_ us, Miss Doublefinger?” An amused, female voice came from behind them, and instinctively all the Agents stiffened.

The second highest female Officer Agent looked up at the roof of the Café just as two people leapt to the ground. They were perhaps the most ordinary looking people a person could ever see in their lives, not very tall and not very short, with dark hair, tanned skin, and faces that were easily forgettable.

Miss Doublefinger would have commended them for their subtlety and their dedication to appearing harmlessly normal – which was a trait that none of the rest of the Baroque Works seemed able to grasp, herself included – but for their eyes.

Deep, deep pools of red and black and purple and gold, _inhuman_ eyes, eyes full of madness and lust, with only the thinnest veneer of faux-humanity to hide them.

Those eyes – and the knowledge of what lay behind them – gave the woman formally known as Paula the major shakes. After all, she and Mr. 1 had been called to do damage control over a town those two had ravaged. She’d seen first-hand what those two were capable of doing.

She knew who – and more importantly, _what_ – they were. They were frightening intelligent and able to blend in with other humans effortlessly, but they were not human. At all.

And it was that simple fact that made them so uniquely terrifying.

The ordinary woman with the inhuman eyes smiled at her, and Miss Doublefinger fought down the shakes.

“Ah, we did not expect you here, Miss Mother’s Day-”

“Miss Valentine, please,” the woman said pleasantly and the darker woman blinked.

“What?”

“I go by Miss Valentine, now,” the woman said.

“And I by Mr. 5,” the man said, tilting his head to the side as if he watched small defenseless rabbits scurrying before him.

“Is that not how things are done?” the woman asked with that falsely sincere smile that showed far too many teeth.

Miss Doublefinger felt an involuntary shudder work its way down her spine as she eventually understood the meaning of those words.

The woman laughed, obviously noticing. “Do not worry, we too have our orders,” she said. “You’re safe from us.”

“Unfortunately,” the man said with a sigh.

And the two of them laughed perfectly normal laughs at the thought of cold blood murder and cannibalism, as the other Officer Agents tried to unobtrusively inch closer to one another.

* * *

**The Oasis of Yuba**

“You should get some sleep,” Ace said from behind her as she gazed off into the distance. She snorted, still stroking Shere’s fur with an idle hand.

“I doubt I’ll be getting much sleep in that madhouse,” she said with a sigh, gesturing towards the mass of noise that came from the pillow-fight below.

The two of them fell silent for several minutes, Ace looking down at Luffy helping the old man in the dried out water pit below, while Kelly kept her gaze on the expanse of stars dotting the night sky for miles around.

“It’s so dry here,” Kelly said as Ace sat on the edge of the roof beside her.

“Not used to it?”

“No. I mean, I have been to places in South Blue that are a lot like this, but I haven’t stayed for such a long period of time in them. It’s drying me out.”

“Why do you stay, then?” Kelly blinked, and looked at the man. He was watching her, dark eyes solemn.

“What?”

“Why do you stay? You hate this place, you aren’t exactly fond of my brother and his friends and you don’t owe them anything, as far as I can tell. My brother put your cats’ lives in danger. So why are you still here?” He asked.

Kelly looked away. “I have to get to the New World. I know they’ll make it and I don’t exactly have a choice in the matter. So I’ll put up with whatever they say or do until I get there. And,” she said with a derisive snort. “It’s not like they’re the worst people I’ve ever had to deal with, after all.”

“But you don’t trust them.”

Kelly rolled her eyes. “Humans have given me plenty of reasons not to, and the only humans I ever trusted are a very long ways away, anyhow.”

“You don’t trust me?” He didn’t sound all that surprised.

“You’re very attractive, funny, and powerful, m’dear, but no, I don’t trust you,” the Magus said idly. “I don’t know what part of ‘I don’t trust any human” you didn’t get.”

There was a deeper silence now, a less comfortable one, and Kelly mentally sighed.

“Sounds like a lonely life,” Ace said after a while.

Kelly bit her lip, smiling sadly as she looked back up at the stars.

“Well, you’re not wrong.”


	17. Bitter Revelations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Secrets come to light as Crocodile's machinations trap the Straw Hats below the casino at Rainbase.

* * *

Well, that hadn’t taken very long, Kelly thought with a sigh as she looked around the unfamiliar city with a great deal of confusion. Not even two minutes in Rainbase and she’d not only lost Ace and her cats, she’d also gotten lost herself.

“Mother of God, I’m turning into Zoro,” she said with a sigh.

But having those abs _would_ be pretty damn nice...

She shook herself away from thoughts of Zoro’s frankly spectacular physique, and looked around. Maybe she should go find Vivi, make sure nothing had happened to her. Her memories were a little bit cloudy on the smaller events that occurred in Arabasta, especially before the Straw Hats went to Alubarna, but she _did_ remember that Vivi met up with Pell and Robin-chan before she was taken to Rain Dinners.

Should she?

“It would make sense,” she said. “If I want Vivi’s help in getting a ship out of Arabasta after all’s said and done.”

But why did she even need Vivi’s help? The Princess was fucking _afraid_ of her.

Why did she even need to help _any_ of them?

She remembered what Ace had said about her not trusting any of them and him questioning why she stayed with the other pirates.

“He’s right,” she said, scratching her head. “Especially after that shit with Shere. Why haven’t I left yet? I know it would take me a little while longer, but I could get to the New World myself. If I worked on that teleport spell for a couple of weeks without, I know I could manage to get to Sabaody fairly quickly. So why the fuck _do_ I stay?”

A little voice inside her whispered quietly _We’re lonely._

She stiffened.

_We’ve always been lonely. The only friends who were ever loyal, ever true to us beyond Mama and Papa are Gin and Shere._

“I’m not-”

_We watched the Straw Hats on the TV for years. We saw their camaraderie, their rapport, their utter devotion to one another. And we’ve always wanted it. After Nee-chan died. After Henry... After Lien denounced us. After Beth and Alex turned their backs._

“All I wanted was to get to the New World-I didn’t need-”

_Bullshit! We’ve never lied to ourself before, why start now?_

Kelly blinked her suddenly stinging eyes rapidly.

 _Luffy declared war on the World_ fucking _Government to save his precious nakama. **We wanted that for ourselves.**_

“I…I…”

 _If you really want an answer to your question, admit the real reason why you joined up with a group of pirates who were destined to become the most infamous in all the world. Why you joined up with a group of pirates whose eventual notoriety would mean you couldn’t_ possibly _keep your race, gender, or power a secret._

Kelly leaned against a wall down a small alley, shuddering.

_Don’t have an answer? I do. We hoped we had finally found some friends who would stand by us. That maybe if we were strong enough, wise enough, funny enough, they would overlook us being a monster. We hoped that if there would be anyone in the world that could accept us, it would be them._

The Magus gave into the tears and wept silently in the shadows of the alley.

_We just wanted to be nakama, too._

* * *

Robin was perhaps the most beautiful woman Kelly had ever seen in her life, and that was saying something, considering Kelly had known many great beauties in her long years. She was tall, willowy, with dark hair and eyes, dressed in elegant, skimpy clothing that clung perfectly to her curvy body.

Overall, it made for one of the most attractive pictures she'd ever seen, and she'd had the glory of seeing Portgas D. Ace in battle, with his shorts riding dangerously low on his hips.

Kelly had always held a fierce torch for Nico Robin. And who wouldn't? Any sane person would take one look at her and fall head over heels in love. The woman was power, grace, beauty, and elegance combined into one very dangerous, very perfect package.

Vivi tried to lunge at said perfect package and was swatted aside as though she were no better than a fly.

 _It was pathetic,_ Kelly thought idly, as Vivi screamed at the woman - like a child - about hurting Igaram. Kelly sighed. It would be wrong to get annoyed with Vivi for mourning her...what exactly had that weirdo been to Vivi? A teacher or something?

Who knew, and quite frankly, who _cared_.

Kelly knew the man wasn't dead because Oda couldn't make a proper sacrifice to save his life, unless it was Ace- _no, they were not going to think about that_ -and Vivi's whining was starting to take a toll on her seriously frayed nerves.

 _This is boring,_ she thought, eyeing Robin's sinfully perfect rear end shamelessly. Everything was going as it was supposed to.

"As much as I would like to stay and deal with you, I simply don't have the time," Robin said to Pell, and something about the way she said it caught Kelly's immediate attention.

She looked closer, and gasped as Robin's Stepford Wife smile dropped.

Then Pell screamed as hands pulled his body back into an unnatural angle. A sickening crack rent the air, and only then did she let him drop, letting him fall to the ground in a ragged, bloody heap.

Robin had not spoken a word, not said a thing, not indulged Pell in talk about Igaram or pretended to stab Vivi. She'd simply taken Pell and broken him like a bored child would break a useless toy. Those dark brown eyes that still showed only amusement turned to Vivi.

"Now, to the casino, Vivi-hime. Unless you would like to end up in the same manner your amusing friend has."

Kelly did not think about what she was doing, and she didn't hesitate for a second before stepping straight into Soru and appearing between Vivi and Robin.

"If you're to take Vivi to the casino," Kelly said dangerously, hoping Robin wasn't as nearly as mad as she sounded. "I think I'm going to have to go with you, _Nico-chan_."

* * *

The double doors opened before them and Vivi strode through them, Kelly right behind her.

“CROCODILE!” She yelled, and Kelly subtly sent her magic flickering to all four corners of the underground cavern as the princess and Crocodile began to converse.

Well, perhaps ‘converse’ wasn’t the best word for it, as it implied a sense of mutuality present between both ‘conversers’. And that was _clearly_ lacking here, because Crocodile clearly didn’t give a fuck at all about Vivi or what she was saying.

Something was very, very wrong here, and there was a taste on the air, a leftover scent from where something truly foul had passed. _Where_ had she smelt it before? It made the skin on the back of her neck buzz and her skin prickle and her belly scream DANGER.

She was jerked out of her thoughts when Vivi lunged forward, decapitating the sand-man with her Slashers.

“Useless,” she heard Smoker say as Crocodile began to reform behind Vivi. Ah, so it was time for her to move, then.

Dropping straight into _Soru_ , the world blurred into a rush of color, only coming back to rights when she slammed her sandal-clad foot, strengthened with the power of the sea’s currents, directly into the man’s reforming face.

Crocodile was knocked back five feet, only managing to remain upright through sheer luck.

“Yeah, how about _no_ ,” Kelly said quietly, landing in front of Vivi with her arms crossed. “Keep yer hands the fuck away from her, jackass.”

“CIEL!” erupted from the cage behind her, along with cheers and cries of encouragement.

“She hit Crocodile!” Someone, she thought it was Usopp, said in awe.

(Kelly refused to acknowledge how good that felt)

“Who are you?” Crocodile snarled, a thin trail of blood dripping out of the side of his mouth.

“That ain’t nunya fucking business, dumbass.”

She was bitter, so damned bitter, and she was so tired. So _tired_. This country made her tired. Made her feel weak and watery at the knees. She didn’t want to think about how good it had felt to have Vivi run so trustingly into her arms. It ached somewhere deep inside her, even now, as the princess pressed against her side, pale fingers curling into her shirtsleeve.

And there was fear, too, frizzing across her skull, down her spine and it made her impatient as anything. What was that smell, that foul taste that lingered despite her magic? Where had she felt it before?

Then, with a sense of dawning horror, she recognized it, even as Crocodile stood and fell back in his chair, staring at her coldly. Then he smiled, low and slow and evilly.

“Such stupidity from one so powerful. Why would you aid a princess and a country doomed to die? And trust me, they’ll all die. Why do you put your life on the line?” He asked, cocking his head to the side.

“I don’t know.” Vivi stiffened and Kel ignored it, keeping her eyes firmly on the man who would enter into a Contract with Daemons for the sake of his own greed. “If I want to be honest, I don’t know. I don’t like the people, don’t like the desert, don’t like the people I’ve shacked up with, and frankly, I just see it all as a big fat waste of my time.”

It felt so very therapeutic to say it out loud, like ripping a bandaid off a scabbed over wound, even as she ignored the protests coming from the people trapped in the cage.

“But I do so hate fucking morons, and you have just proven yourself to be one of the biggest of them all. How long have you been in a Contract, Alligator? And just what in the hell possessed you to enter into a fucking Contract with goddamned _Highborn **Daemons**_?”

Dead silence. Kelly began to shake as Crocodile kept smiling at her, as though he knew the inside to some joke she’d never understand. But she did. Oh how she did.

“You utter fucking bastard,” she breathed. “You utter _fucking **bastard**_. You know what they’re capable of. Of course you do. But it doesn’t matter to you, now does it? You know that a contract with them entails and the heavy price you’ll have to pay, but you’re not worried, because you won’t be paying that price. But what prize could you offer Highborn in a war-torn country to make them not take the Contract’s worth from your hide?” Kelly’s eyes widened in shock.

“My God, you intend to let them have what’s left of Arabasta. You intend to sacrifice the millions of people left after the war to the mercy of the Highborn. _What the fuck is wrong with you?!_ ”

Then there was more silence, ringing through the cavernous hall, was only broken by Luffy’s questions and Nami’s shuddering replies. Vivi had moved closer, shaking with fear.

Kelly whirled, turning on Robin, mind awash with the memories of a village that had been ruled by that fucking tyrant Aholo, memories of the day she’d managed to escape, breaking the Contract Aholo had entered so willingly for gold. Memories of the day she came back and found herself upon a scene of death and bloody carnage.

“And you! How can you call yourself a child of Ohara if you’ll take part in such a thing? You must know the level of destruction this bastard intends to bring down on this country! You’ve been on the run for even longer than I have, Nico Robin. You _know_ what Daemons are capable of doing,” she practically begged the older woman. Robin couldn’t be that heartless, could she?

_Please, no, I can’t take it. She’s Robin! She’s not a bad person, she’s good, she has to be. Right? Please?_

“We have to head to Alubarna,” she told Crocodile, only the tiniest spasm of her face showing that Kelly had gotten through to her. “Operation Utopia is beginning now.”

Crocodile laughed, and it was so wrong, so awful how much genuine joy was in that sound.

“I’ll take what I want from this country, and I don’t care who must die to make that happen! AHAHAHAHAHAHA!” He threw back his head, as Vivi began to shake even harder.

“You bastard!” the princess sobbed, fingers fisting in Kelly’s sleeve. “You _bastard_ , I’ll stop you! I swear-”

Things were moving fast, so fast, as Crocodile pulled a key from his coat and stood, baiting Vivi. But of course he “dropped” the key into the pit of bananawanis…she looked closer at the beasts and felt the hair on the back of her neck stand straight up.

“Vivi, ya need to run,” she said, reaching forward and grabbing the princess’s arm, pulling her away from the hole where a… _thing_ …was slowly emerging.

Crocodile laughed. “I was going to ask if you wanted to come with us to Alubarna, Vivi-hime, but no. I think I’ll just have you killed here, along with your impertinent friend.”

Kelly felt her eyes bulge as the immense beast came into view, towering many meters over her head. It looked like an ordinary bananawani, yellow, huge, and with the ubiquitous banana on its head. But it stank of death, of pain, and of awful things she couldn’t name, and moved with a slippery sort of grace a creature of that size shouldn’t have possessed. She kept Vivi behind her as she backed up.

Then it opened its mouth, letting out a bestial roar as hundreds of enormous purple tentacles exploded where there should have just been a tongue. It made a picture that seemed to be taken straight from HP Lovecraft’s worst nightmares, and Kelly knew that the Highborns in Crocodile’s service had created it.

“Fuck,” Kelly whispered, wishing she had a blade on her, which would allow her to defeat the monster without using her claws. If she survived this, she would never go anywhere without a blade again!

Vivi screamed in terror, her cry mixing with the horror from those still locked in the cage.

“One moment, Boss,” Robin said as Kelly began running through possible ways to take down a daemon-mutated bananawani without revealing her magic or her race. The thing lunged, and Kelly dropped straight into _Soru_ , one arm firmly locked around Vivi.

The moment she got clear, she dropped Vivi to her feet, and grabbed her shoulders. “I’ll distract it, you run for your life, you got me?”

Vivi shook from the thing’s residual terror-aura, her legs locked together from the overwhelming sense of _PREDATOR_ that the bananawani gave off. Kelly promptly slapped the woman across her face and cursed as a hard, rubbery band curled around her stomach.

“ _RUN_ , YOU IDIOT!” Kelly roared as the tentacle slung her through the air, only coming to a stop when she brutally smashed against the bars of the cage. Everything whited out for a few agonizing moments as she slid down the bars.

Someone – _Luffy? Nami?_ – was screaming her name as she struggled to her feet. In her hand – _when had she picked it up?_ – there was a piece of wood about an arm’s length, with a jagged end. It must have come from the table when it smashed under that thing’s weight.

“I do wonder, Boss, if we shouldn’t leave him alive,” Robin said as Vivi inched closer to freedom. Kelly couldn’t spare much attention to the two, and promptly turned back to the monster.

She looked up at the beast as Magic stole through her ribs, healing her wounds and preparing her for the battle ahead. She smiled. It would be hard. It would be very hard, but she could do it. She’d faced _Highborn_ with even greater disadvantages than the ones she had in this fight now.

She was going to kick this thing’s ass into next week.

“I got this,” she said with a smile. “I got this.”

Then she felt the slightest pressure against her wrist, heard the tearing of cloth, and then Robin spoke, her voice as calm as it ever was.

It was at that moment that Kelly realized how bad an idea pissing off Nico Robin really was.

“After all, I do wonder how much an adult Sea Snake would be worth on the slave market these days.”


	18. Sorrow of the Serpent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath of Robin's cruelty.

* * *

At first, she hadn’t registered it. Or anything, really, after Robin had spoken.

Then there was wind blowing gently over her bare arm, a gasp of shock from someone behind her, then she looked down, and…

Scales the color of the clearest ocean sparkled faintly in the dim light that illuminated the cavernous hall, exposed for the world to see. A hard lump lodging in her throat, she grabbed her bare arm, covering it as best she could with her hand.

Crocodile’s voice was dim, barely registering in her mind, but his laugh was awful, tinged with a greed she knew all too well. “Well, well, well. You have a good eye, Miss All-Sunday, to spot such a valuable prize.”

She looked back up at Robin, the air clogging in her lungs, her mouth working helplessly as she tried to say something, anything… A hiss dragged her forcibly out of her shock and she moved without thinking, dodging the strike of one razor sharp tentacle tongue and leaping high, high into the air.

The voice in her head, the one that had grounded her for years, the one that had given her the strength to crawl miles in the freezing cold night with injuries that would have killed anyone else, drowned out the shock, the hysterical terror surging up her spine, and the deep despair that had been with her ever since arriving in this world.

She was _calm_ , a false calm that would not last for long, and when it would go she knew she would break, but it would do for now.

_Kill._

She landed on the top of the thing’s head, her Magic spreading out, searching for a weakness in the immense hide of the creature, and she found it as she landed atop the creature’s head. It knew her, knew the taste of magic and _hungered_ for it as only such a twisted creature could.

_There._

There was a soft part between the two immense eyes that sat on that yellow head, a crag that gave way to a small, oozing, open sore that leaked pus. It was more than likely the place that the daemons had infected the creature.

It would do. She would need _Rankyaku_ to break through, but one strengthened by her own Magic. As what felt like the sea’s currents roared through her veins, chasing away the awful, dried feeling she’d suffered with ever since she’d stepped into this damned desert, she could see the way she should do it.

 _‘Oh, so that’s how it works_ ,’ she thought, mind as clear as crystal. _‘That’s fair simple.’_

She leapt as the creature whipped its head wildly around, screaming that awful roar as it tried to throw her off. Her leg blurred as it flicked out twenty times, magic and sheer force leaving her foot in the shape of a crescent blade.

Blood gushed in rivers as the blade of air and condensed magic carved into the beast’s neck, cutting through hardened muscle, sinew, and armor-like flesh with ease. Kel landed atop the corpse as its head rolled towards the bottom of the stairs, and turned to face the two Baroque Works agents. Robin’s eyes were wide and Crocodile’s narrowed.

“This is a battle you won’t win,” someone said, cold and strange and utterly alien – _is that her voice?_ Kelly thought distantly. “And I am not enemy you want to fight. I suggest you leave right now and spare me the bother.”

She could smell fear and rage and blood, so much blood, glorious blood, in the room, a heady scent that made her want to _tear_ and _rip_ , and…

Fear. So much fear. And it came from the people in the cage to her right and the princess who stood frozen at the bottom of the stairs.

She risked a look towards the Straw Hats, and felt her heart falter. Nami’s eyes were clouded, locked directly on her exposed scales. The fear came from _her_ , a bitterly strong taste tempered by confusion, shock, and a thread of disbelieving anger.

Kelly kept her face neutral as she turned back to face the two Baroque Works leaders.

Crocodile eyed her, then shook his head. “No, it’s not worth the hassle,” he said mournfully. “Let the banawanis eat it.” Robin’s face tightened, then she drew a small whistle from under her shirt and blew it.

Kelly slapped her hands over her ears as a high-pitched, extremely loud shriek blasted out, grinding her teeth as the noise rattled through the nerves beneath her teeth to the scarred tissue covering her back like a worm wriggling beneath the skin.

There was a thunderous splash as another mutated banawanis emerged from the hole the first had come from, then another, a third, a fourth, a fifth, all stinking of rage, Daemon filth, and pain. Kelly staggered, fighting to regain her composure as her ears rang.

Crocodile laughed. “You can join the snake in the banawanis’ stomachs, Princess.” There was a scream. Kelly saw Vivi hit the ground at the bottom of the stairs with a sickening thud. She had tried to sneak past the sandman and failed. Crocodile and Miss All-Sunday turned and left the room as the water levels began to rise, lapping at the ankles of those who stood in the cage.

“Vivi!” Luffy and Usopp screamed.

Kelly leapt off the immense corpse and staggered a bit as she landed – _had that thing been a dog whistle? Why the fuck was it affecting her so much_ – before hurrying to the fallen princess’s side. She knelt, still swaying, and felt for a pulse, sighing with relief when she tasted Vivi’s heart beating strongly beneath her chest. There was no blood that belonged to Vivi tainting the air, and she could feel no breaks along the fragile lining of her head. No head injuries, then.

“Small favors,” she said wearily, and gathered the princess in her arms as the first mutations lumbered towards her. She danced through the first rain of strikes that dug foot-wide craters in the floor, flicking her leg out, cutting through muscle, flesh, sinew as easily as a hot knife through butter. The world blurred into a whirling mass of blood, flashing colors, and dying screams until she landed by the cage, the last corpse of the mutated banawanis collapsing to the ground behind her.

“Y’better duck,” she said gruffly, and flicked her leg at the bars above their heads once, twice, three times in rapid succession and quickly moved back as the entire front of the cage hit the floor with a clang. She set the unconscious princess down by one of the cage walls.

“We’re more ‘n likely going to have to swim our way outta here,” she said, handing Vivi to Zoro, as Luffy and Usopp cheered their freedom. She mentally cursed, noting the presence of Smoker. She’d forgotten he was there.

 _One more person who knows!_ A voice in her head moaned with sick fear and desperation, and she promptly shoved it away. This was not the time to have a break down. She could do that _later_.

“What are those things?” he asked, his voice devoid of any telling emotion.

“You know what Daemons are?” she asked, managing to force herself to meet his light green eyes head on. They were calm, without judgment, and unwillingly she felt herself ease just a bit.

His mouth tightened. “So it was true? What you were saying to him?” he asked.

“What are Daemons?” Usopp asked, curious.

“Monsters,” Zoro and Kelly said in unison.

“They eat humans,” came Nami’s faint voice. “They’re shapeshifters, mind-stealers, flesh-renders. They hunt anything humanoid with a voracious appetite.”

Everyone turned to face her. Her face was pale, and she stank of fear now, even more than she had before.

“I came across two in my travels,” she said, rubbing her mouth with a trembling hand. “They hunger for human flesh, for _any_ flesh. Some can disguise themselves as humans, and others look like warped animals…Is it true?” She demanded, turning to Kelly. “Is what you said true? Does Crocodile have Daemons?”

Kelly swallowed at the raw anger and fear in her words. “Only the most powerful of the hierarchy could have created those things. Most Daemons would have either eaten or ignored them. Only the Highborn would have gone to the trouble to warp them like that – hey, stop that!” she said, yanking her bare arm away from Luffy’s questing fingers. He had been rubbing them over the exposed scales with curiosity in his eyes.

“Why? They’re so pretty!” he protested and she glared at him.

“Why did you hide it from us, Ciel?” Usopp asked, peering at her scales by Luffy’s side.

“Yeah, **_Ciel_** ,” Nami said, her voice cold. “Why did you hide?”

Kelly stiffened and shot her a look. The signs were subtle, but they were there. More pronounced lines around Nami’s eyes, a slightly flared nose, and thinned lips curved with just a bit of disgust. Not the first time she’d ever seen such a look leveled in her direction and it wouldn’t be the last, undoubtedly, but from _Nami_?

Kelly looked away. “I-I had my reasons,” she said lamely, her hands tightening. There was a harsh thrumming in her head and her lungs couldn’t suck down enough air.

“We can talk about this later,” Zoro interrupted, picking Vivi out of the water as she groggily opened her eyes. “The water’s rising.”

Sure enough, it was up to everyone’s knees by this point. Usopp got his arms around Luffy as the other boy slumped, the water’s power leaching the strength away from him.

“Ohhhhh…” he slurred, eyes rolling comically as Usopp fought to keep as much of him out of the water as he could.

“Zoro, help me here!” the dark-skinned boy said, swearing. “Luffy, you need to stop eating so much!”

“Meeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaattttt,” the punch-drunk pirate said, grinning stupidly.

“Nami-swan!” a very familiar voice called from somewhere above the stairs, and Kelly froze.

_Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!_

Sure enough, Sanji’s blond head appeared of the top of the stairs. Kelly pressed her bare arm against her side, as though that would somehow hide the shiny swath of scales.

“Nami-swan!” the blond man called as he started down the stairs, only to stop at the sight of the carnage below, his eyes widening.

“What the fuck?” he breathed. “Shitty swordsman, did you-?”

“Nah, he did it,” Zoro said, jerking his head towards Kelly as he helped Vivi stand. “Killed them all by himself.”

The Magus swallowed painfully. Sanji’s eyes locked on Kelly and narrowed on the exposed scales. Then they traveled back up to her face, and the two of them locked eyes for a few brief, agonizing moments. Air stuttered in her lungs and throat. Her hands were ice cold and clammy, everything felt too sharp and her belly rolled with nausea.

_I didn’t want them to know I didn’t want any of them to know please dear God why-_

“How the hell did you kill them, you shitty scoundrel?” Sanji asked, looking incredulous.

“He’s a monster, of course he could,” Nami said quietly and covered her mouth with her hand, as though she hadn’t meant to say it. Usopp gasped.

Kelly felt her eyes water and gritted her teeth.

_I knew it. I shouldn’t be surprised._

Zoro cleared his throat, catching everyone’s attention. “We’re going to have to swim out of here as fast as we can. I don’t want to run into anymore of those things. Ero-cook, grab Luffy. And you, Marine.” He turned his attention to Smoker, who’d been watching them all carefully, and had managed to stay mostly out of the water. “I’d suggest you go out the way the cook came in. If you go under, we’re not pulling you out.” His voice was calm and cold, and Kelly knew that unless Luffy said otherwise, Zoro would do exactly that.

She would admire that pragmatism later, when she didn’t quite feel like she was going to fly apart at the seams.

The windows splintered as Smoker ran up the stairs, getting out of the water’s way.

“Shit!” Zoro swore. “Usopp, hand him here-”

He managed to get his arms around Luffy just as the windows exploded inwards, water pouring into the room with a roar that shook the air. Kelly closed her eyes as the water swamped her, ignoring the yells of shock from the Straw Hats, and let it wash the filth from her body and mind.

* * *

She hadn’t killed all of the banawanis, Kelly realized as the group made a mad dash for land. Only a small portion of the mutated creatures had come at the whistle’s call. Most had obviously preferred to stay in the water, allowing it to sooth their pus-filled, ever-bleeding wounds.

But now, lured by the massive amounts of blood leaking into the water from the destroyed underwater building, some were swimming upwards in vaguely ominous spirals. Others were being whipped into a feeding frenzy by the corpses of their fellows, tearing off huge hunks of meat with their wickedly serrated teeth and piercing tentacles.

A shriek drew Kelly out of her thoughts, and she whipped around to see Nami being yanked back, a purplish black tentacle wrapped around her ankle. The navigator gagged as the water rushed into her mouth and clawed at her throat.

Kelly swore and took off, slamming into the bananwani with a shoulder reinforced by all of the Magic she could muster, leaving a crater like a wrecking ball in the creature’s side. The tentacle released Nami as the unconscious creature slumped and began to float to the bottom, where a bloody cloud of gnashing teeth, writhing tentacles, and dead meat obscured what banawanis remained. But Kelly could see that eight or so had not been drawn into the feeding frenzy, as Sanji grabbed Nami and swam for the surface.

The Magus grunted in pain as a tentacle from a banawani she had not seen sneak up on her pierced her side. With a snarl she tore it from her flesh and as her blood mingled with the already blood-soaked water, the banawanis’ attention was forcibly drawn from the escaping Straw Hats.

Kelly swallowed painfully as those maddened, blood-hungry eyes focused on her, her blood drawing them as inexorably as a moth would be to the flame.

She only chanced the briefest of looks at the pirates swimming towards the surface. They didn’t spare a single look back.

It was surprising how much that hurt.

* * *

**ZORO**

“Zoro, where’s Ciel?” Luffy asked, in between hacking out water and bile. Zoro kept a hand on his captain’s back as he rid his lungs of the liquid that could have killed him.

The crap-cook was fluttering his hands over the money-witch’s ankle, which was horribly bruised and slightly swollen.

“Those things are like vices,” Nami said, trembling visibly, face creased with pain. “It would have broken my leg if…if Ciel hadn’t…”

“What the hell are those things?” Usopp screeched, his face full of fear.

“They, they looked like banawanis, but what was wrong with them?” Vivi said with a shudder.

“Zoro, _where’s Ciel_?” Luffy ordered.

“He stayed behind to give us time to get out,” Zoro said quietly.

“WHAT?” Luffy shrieked, and would have leapt back into the water if Zoro hadn’t gotten his arm around the shorter boy’s waist and hauled him back. “ZORO, LET GO!”

“Luffy, stop. Getting yourself killed won’t do shit to help him,” he said. “Ciel took out six of them without breaking a sweat. Do you honestly think he needs us?”

He would never have admitted it out loud, but he was worried as Luffy was. Not because he didn’t think the other man could handle himself, he knew Ciel could slaughter the monsters with little trouble. But he also knew the stories.

His mother (and he almost smiled at the memory of her) had told him as a young boy of the Snakes, those who lived on the land and in the deep sea, with their luminous scales and flowing hair and unbelievable speed and strength. She’d also told him of how they’d been hunted into near-extinction, their flesh, hair, scales, and blood prized medicines on the black market.

Ciel’s eyes had been _terrified_ , a sort of fear he’d never thought he’d see in a…well, Ciel wasn’t a human, but in anything that so resembled a human. He’d seen that same fear in hunted animals’ eyes, the knowledge that if they slowed down, if they stopped for a second they would be dead to benefit another creature, their meat in someone’s belly, their hide hacked from their flesh.

Luffy stilled, then pulled away. His captain’s eyes were solemn and a little sad.

“He’s _always_ needed us, Zoro.”

The swordsman sighed, and ran a hand through his hair in aggravation. He knew that, he wasn’t an idiot.

“Luffy-”

“Look at the lake!” Someone screamed behind them, and both swordsman and captain snapped their heads towards the lake. Blood was covering the lake, staining it a nasty brownish-red.

“What the hell-” Zoro grabbed Luffy and hauled him back as the lake’s surface exploded upwards, mushrooming into a ten foot tall tower of blood, water, and viscera. Usopp shrieked as a decapitated head of a banawani nearly flattened him. The Straw Hats made a dash for cover as what remained of the banawanis rained to the ground, hunks of eviscerated meat that a casual observer never would have guessed had once belonged to such a whole animal.

“Holy fuck,” someone breathed after a short time.

Zoro really couldn’t blame them.

* * *

**NAMI**

She’d been in worse pain than this many times before, she thought with a sigh, trying to distract herself from the throbbing in her ankle. She’d managed to escape from actual Daemons and lived, the navigator told herself, with much worse injuries than a broken ankle.

Her fingers trembled weakly as she leaned against Sanji’s side, her belly rolling with nausea, pain and something else that felt a lot like regret.

Ciel had looked terrified. She wasn’t used to that. A fishman, snakeman, whatever he was, actually showing _fear_? None of the fishmen back at Arlong Park feared anything. Or if they had, they certainly had never shown it around-… _the scream had been terrible. Nami peered out of her door, wondering who had made the sound, and saw a group of fishmen kneeling around one who rocked on the ground, moaning low in his throat. One of the others picked him up, cradling him close, and carried him away._

_“What’s going on?” she heard Ao, a sturgeon fishman, say to the pufferfish man on his left._

_The pufferfish, who went by the name Nikozeru, shook his head. “Got a letter from home. His mate was taken by humans and butchered after trying to protect some mermaids that a pirate took interest in.”_

_Ao gasped. “Shit, are you joking? You mean Sonya, the Snake he’s always going on about that he married before he joined the crew?”_

_Nikozeru sighed and nodded._

_“Poor bastard,” Ao said with no little sorrow. “All Moi wanted was to make sure his wife could walk on the land that belonged to his people. He didn’t even_ like _hurting humans. Will he be alright?”_

_“Would you be, if you were in his place?” Nikozeru asked dryly._

_“Fuck, if some pissant piece of shit human went after my girls back home I’d kill every human in sight,” Ao snarled._

_“It’s something every member of this crew with a family has to live with. Humans are the real monsters, after all.” Nikozeru said, and Ao nodded._

_Later, Nami would hear of how Moi managed to escape the watchers Arlong had put on him and had wiped out a small town to the west of the Park, butchering every human there, from the elderly who could not run to the smallest babies wailing in their cribs, tearing them all apart in his mindless rage. The carnage lasted for hours before the other fishmen managed to subdue him and drag him back to the Park, still wailing and thrashing like a doomed animal._

_And much later, Nami would hear of how Moi had hung himself in the kitchens he had spent so much time in, a picture of his wife lying tattered and tear-soaked on the floor below his feet…_

_-_ …around her. Nami breathed slowly, the memories of that day flashing through her mind.

That didn’t mean anything – _but it_ did _, though_ – Ciel had lied to them all – _with good reason_ – lied to **her** – _maybe because he knew exactly how she would react_ – and he wasn’t human – _what did that matter, in the end?_ – he’d massacred those banawanis – _and if he hadn’t, they would all be dead._

Nami breathed slowly, then realized her ankle had stopped hurting so badly. She looked down and realized that swelling had gone down, the bruising had lightened, and it was no longer broken.

What in the world?

“It’s the Marines!” Usopp yelled.

Zoro swore and hauled Luffy to his feet. Nami clambered upright as well, waving off Sanji’s offer of help.

“Zoro, what about Ciel? He’s not here yet!” Luffy protested, and Nami stiffened, looking around. Sure enough, the man had yet to appear. She didn’t know what to make of that.

The swordsman shook his head. “If he wants to, he’ll be able to catch up. But we need to move, right now.”

Then they were running down the streets, and Nami tried not to think about the man who’d lied to her.

She didn’t succeed.

* * *

**ROBIN**

There was something like shame in her belly. She wasn’t a stranger to the emotion, nor to its cousins, regret, worry, and fear, but this was different. Deeper, darker, more awful.

 _What have I done?_ A soft voice in her head asked her. _What have I_ done _?_

Those flashing eyes that had looked at her with such defiance, speaking of Ohara as though he had any clue what it was like to be a child of those shores in today’s world.

It _had_ pleased her beyond words to see the bravado, the confidence stripped from the arrogant Snake’s face, to see the raw vulnerability exposed like he’d done to her, but…

She knew what became of Snakes. Professor Clover had refused to let her see the more graphic books dealing with the race after she’d discovered one that all too gleefully talked about the slave trade and the “proper method for skinning a snake without damaging the prized scales.”

It had given her nightmares for months, what she had seen in those books.

- _…The woman laughs, a big sound, booming and happy. She’s never heard anyone laugh like her before. Women are supposed to be meek and quiet, with soft girlish giggles hidden behind their hands in a gesture of modesty, or so Robin’s aunt has always said._

_“You’re not freak, darling,” the woman’s voice is deep and warm and sounds a little like the way Professor Clover’s bottles of honey mead look when the morning light hits them in just the right way and Robin is maybe a little bit in love._

_“But I can sprout limbs wherever and all the kids say I’m a child of the Devil!” Robin protests, wincing as the woman doctors her bruises and scrapes. Fury passes over the taller woman’s face, though her dark hands are still gentle as they rub the cream into one particularly vicious bruise._

_“You are_ not _a child of the devil, little one. You were given a_ gift _, one for you to use as you see fit. What you do with your life will determine whether or not you truly have the Devil’s curse. And besides, that’s one unbelievable talent you’ve got there little lady,” the woman says, then sighs._

_“You wanna hear a secret, Robin-chan?” Robin looks up at her and nods. The woman pushes back one sleeve of her oversized jacket. There, glittering faintly in the noon-day sun on that muscled arm, is a pattern of dark green scales that extend up the arm and out of sight._

_Robin’s mouth drops open and she looks up into eyes that are so familiar it hurts, and whispers “You’re a Snake.”_

_“That I am,” the woman says with a wide grin, “And much more besides. You are no child of the devil, just as I am no vicious freak of nature. And,” here her voice turns wistful, and there is a longing in her next words that will take Robin many, many years to understand. “I knew your Mama long ago.”_

_Robin’s eyes widen. “You-you did? Can you tell me about her?”_

_“But of course, mim ze-Robin-chan,” she says, and there’s a catch in her words. Robin wonders what her friend called her, wonders why this strange and brilliant woman has taken such interest in an outcast freak like her, but she doesn’t care._

_As the two of them walk towards the Tree, with people glaring at them on either side, the woman swings her up onto her broad shoulders, and Robin wonders if this was what it was like to have a family._

_And she cries, just a little, because she is so happy…-_

Robin was, above all things, a consummate actress. Not a single shred of the emotion that raged in her heart showed on her face as Crocodile chased after the mysterious “Mr. Prince”.

_-…“How can you call yourself a child of Ohara!”…-_

She closed her eyes, and did not think of those that had perished that day, of what they must think of her now. She closed her eyes and thought instead of the two who Crocodile prized over all of his subordinates, and their mad, inhuman, perpetually hungry eyes. She thought of his connection to the hated World Government and firmed her heart. She did what she had to do in order to survive. Nothing more, nor less.

But that knowledge did not lessen the shame.

* * *

**KELLY**

She leaned against the wall of the alley she’d escaped to after getting out of the lake, the ground hard and bumpy under her ass. She was still drenched in water-diluted blood, her gore-covered hair unbound and tangled around her face. She idly picked at a bit of intestine that had gotten caught under her pinky claw and flicked it away.

“Mama?” She didn’t look up as her familiars landed on either side of her. Just kept picking at the viscera that stubbornly remained under her nails. Blood ran down her hands as she picked and picked and picked at her flesh with her claws.

“Mistress, what are you doing?”

She didn’t want to talk. She firmly kept up the wall in her mind between them and her. For a few moments she simply wanted to be alone. Alone. She had not been properly alone in her own mind for years and years and years and years and years and years it seemed and it was _wearing on her nerves_.

And then hands, very gentle and warm, human hands curled around her wrists and held them, keeping her from hurting herself further.

“Stop that,” Ace said quietly. “Come on, Ciel, look at me.”

She looked, because she had no self-control when it came to beautiful people who had a strange fondness for her. She’d always made friends with people who outclassed her in every way, what she had long since assumed was some latent desire of masochism rearing its ugly head. She’d been desperate, always been, for people who were sweet and lovely and better than she ever was to look at her and _like her_ , because maybe then that would make herself be better of a person. Maybe.

(Probably not, but there was always that hope.)

Her parents, Beth, Alex, henry, Lien, Erin, Nee-chan, the men and women she’d seduced, _Mina_ , the Straw Hats…even when she’d failed them in every way possible, she had always been so covetous of them. Hiding her faults and fears and desperate neediness down below a layer of sarcasm and charm and stupid jokes so could she could have someone look at her and pretend that they loved her for a little while.

She was too raw and vulnerable and her heart ached, and most of all she was _tired_. So tired of living and of being a freak, a monster.

“Maybe I should have died. Maybe it would have been better for everyone,” she said to Ace, her voice strangely conversational, and his hands tensed on his wrists. Shere let out a pained sound, trying to rub her head against her arm. Kelly pushed her away.

“No, don’t do that sweetie, you’ll get dirty,” she said in that same strange, unrecognizable voice.

“Mistress, don’t do this,” Gin whispered, his voice almost pleading.

Ace’s hands cupped her face and forced her to look up, into his eyes. They were dark and kind. She trembled.

“We’re going to go get you washed up, all right? Gin, Shere, go find Ciel some clothes, if you would,” he asked of her Familiars and they quickly acquiesced, darting off in the direction.

“Why do you call me Ciel?” Kelly asked, curious, feeling dazed and. He did know her name after all.

“It makes you more comfortable,” he said, and her heart jolted uncomfortably at that.

Because it _did_ make her more comfortable. She didn’t mind her name, never had, it had been a family name after all, and meant something cool in Celtic or Irish or something, but Ciel…Ciel wasn’t quite so, so _feminine_. It had a little hint of it, just enough to please her, but it was a masculine word. She had always liked that.

How had he known?

“Come on, let’s go get you washed up. Can’t go around soaked in blood after all,” Ace said soothingly. He drew her to her feet and she let him lead her towards…somewhere. They walked for a few minutes, until Ace spotted a shower hidden in a small alley, like the sort of shower found at beaches so people could wash their sandy feet, but this was hidden back, surrounded by a wooden wall that could give a person a bit of privacy.

She didn’t know why it was there. Didn’t care. She wanted to be clean. Had to be clean otherwise she would break even more. She shuffled behind the wall and quickly undressed.

“Hand your clothes here, and I’ll get rid of them.” Ace’s voice was so gentle.

Why was he doing this? Why was he caring for her? He had nothing to gain. Why would a pirate do this? Why would a _human_ do this?

She handed the blood soaked clothes over the wall, leaving only her binder and briefs in place, which had both been spared the bloodbath. As she turned on the water – it still worked, a stream of lukewarm water hitting her in the face – she smelled the scent of fire and of her clothes burning.

 _Burning, burning, burning away to ashes,_ she thought dazedly.

* * *

She stepped out from behind the screen, a great deal steadier than she had been before, dressed in the clothes Shere and Gin had brought her. Off-white, baggy breeches and sturdy leather boots were paired with an oversized, thigh-length, hooded tunic of the same color, embroidered at the oversized sleeves, hem, and hood with blue-green and gold bands of color. The hood had a face mask much in the manner of a character she had known as a child, one Aburame Shino from the show _Naruto_.

Ace, who was sitting on the ground, petting Gin, stood when he saw her.

The Magus gave him a shaky grin, then knelt as Shere approached her, eyes big and watery. “Shere, darling, come here,” she said softly and opened her arms as she slowly peeled back the walls she’d hastily erected in her mind since Miss All-Sunday had blown her cover. Shere butted the top of her head against her chin, purring almost violently, and Gin promptly deserted Ace to join his fellow Familiar in lavishing love over their Magus.

Tears pricked at her eyes as a wave of _love_ and _warmth_ and _closeness_ surrounded her mind and pulled tight, almost like a hug.

 _Thank you_ , her mind whispered to them. _I love you, and I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry for shutting you out like that._

“Thank you…Ace,” she said quietly, and he grinned.

“No problem. What brought this on, anyway? I’m surprised you left the crew behind. Do they know where you are? And why were you so bloody, anyway?”

Kelly bit her lip.

“I thought it would be a good idea if I started to make my way out of Arabasta on my own,” The dark-haired Magus said, looking down at her boots.

“Mistress, what in the hells-?”

“Mama, why-?!”

“What brought this on?” Ace asked, looking surprised.

“It’s,” she sighed, took a deep breath. “They found out, about,” she gestured lamely at her arm, “About my…not being, well, human,” she finished weakly.

Gin sighed.

“Oh no, Mama…”

“I find it rather hard to believe my brother reacted badly,” Ace said.

-… _“They’re so pretty!”…-_

 “Well, he’s not the only one on the crew, now is he?” she snapped, her words harsher than she meant them to be. “And I’d always planned on leaving, I’m just speeding up my schedule-”

The air _quivered_. Kelly’s head snapped up.

“What is it?” Ace asked.

There was a scent on the breeze, one she recognized only vaguely.

“Mistress, can you-?”

She let Gin leap to the ground, and nodded. “I do.”

“Mama, it smells foul,” Shere complained, burying her sensitive nose in the Magus’s neck.

It smelled like the taint of Daemons, of dead flowers and pus-filled ooze, but mingled with that was the new stench of rotting human flesh, a smell Kelly had become quite familiar with over the past decade. It was growing closer and stronger with every second, and she could hear the _shuffle_ , _shuffle, click_ of unsteady, stiffened limbs.

“What in the hells?” she whispered, and she looked up just in time to see a figure falling from the sky. She lunged forward, hauling Ace over one shoulder, and raced up the side of the building in front of her. She landed on the roof, Ace still slung over her shoulder, as Gin and Shere landed beside her.

“What the fuck was th-” Ace’s voice was breathless, but a fierce, chittering noise erupted from behind them. Kelly barely dodged out of the way.

Gin roared as he shot forward, growing as he went and latched his teeth on the neck of many-limbed creature that had scuttled up the side of the building like some demented spider. The thing _shrieked_ , the sound curdling her blood, and managed to break free from Gin’s grip.

It scurried away, out of reach on the far side of the roof as Kelly set Ace back on his feet. Fire flickered at the pirate’s fingertips as the two of them stood side by side, and got their first clear view of it.

Ace swore and Kelly felt her eyes bulge as the thing uncoiled its limbs and _stood up_. It looked like a _human_ , about six feet in height, with humanoid features and a shaved head. But it had a short, squat body bulging with muscles that rippled unnaturally below the skin, and were covered in a dense, dark hair. The thing’s six arms (three on each side) ended in a set of razor-sharp falcon’s talons that glinted wickedly in the afternoon sun.

There was a sharp, chirring sound behind them. The pirate and Magus leapt away as something crashed down in the spot where they’d just been, landing back-to back in the middle of the roof as a dozen other creatures that resembled the first surrounded them.

Gin and Shere, full sized and bristling with fury, guarded their blind spots, Gin to Ace’s left and Shere to Kelly’s.

The creatures all smelled of Daemons, and of the Daemon taint, but they weren’t Daemons. Their eyes were still human, though pain and the foulness that had mutated them to this state having replaced what intelligent thought and humanity might once have laid within.

 _“What the fuck?!”_ Ace and Kelly gasped in unison.

“Have you ever seen these things before?” Ace asked, and Kelly shook her head frantically.

“No, never! They aren’t Daemons, but I think a Daemon made them,” she cursed.

“Thralls, Mistress. Kureha-sama told you of them back on Drum,” Gin growled, his voice tight. “They once were human, but were changed by some dark rituals of the Daemons, in much the same manner as some Daemons change animals they take a fancy to.”

“We got lucky!” That screechy voice came from an ape-ish looking woman with pale skin and too many legs. “The Highest left us here to guard the city while our hundreds of brothers and sisters went after the prey, but we have found a plentiful feast we need not even share! And a Magus of such power in the bargain!” She cackled and her fellows joined in, the sound akin to chalkboards being dragged across thousands of decaying fingernails.

Kelly pressed against Ace’s back, taking comfort from the sudden flare of warmth beneath his skin and her Familiars’ warning growls.

“What prey?” Ace demanded. “What prey is so important that you’d send a fleet of you monsters after them?”

The first creature, the spider-like atrocity, curved his mouth in a wide mockery of a smile, revealing rows of razor sharp teeth dripping with poison.

“The pirates and a long lost little princess! They’ll taste extra yummy in our family’s tummies!” A bird-like creature with the multi-faceted eyes of an insect chirped.

Both pirate and Magus stilled, and she could feel the worry for his brother in every tensed muscle. Of _course_ the Daemons would send their goons to stop the pirates, Kelly thought with a dawning sense of horror. They wouldn’t bother going themselves, not for what they would assume was little prey, but Crocodile wouldn’t be so stupid as to not use them and their resources whenever he could. Whoever these Highborn were, they had some serious power backing them up, as these Thralls were strong, almost as strong as one of the Animalistic.

“Ace, we need to get to the others before their army does,” she whispered, pitching her voice as low as she could. “Where’s that little speedboat of yours?”

“In my bag. It can expand when I want it to.”

“Does it go over sand?”

“Of course. Do you know where my brother and his crew are heading”

Magic sparked at the edges of her body as she let her body fall into a fighter’s stance.

“We’ll need to make this quick,” she commented, and could practically feel Ace’s feral grin.

Both pirate, Magus, and jungle cats leapt as one towards their attackers with a battle cry that shook the air.

* * *

Black blood splattered the ground as her claws tore into and _through_ a windpipe that gushed disgusting ooze as she dodged around a mantis-man’s lion like paws. Gin leapt over her head and smashed into the thing with a snarl that gave her a brief flash of white-hot pride. Shere careened through the air, tussling with the ape woman who’d spoken earlier, while Ace squared off with a man who was a disturbing mix of dog and scorpion.

Kelly staggered as something crashed into her back. Dozens of vice-like centipede limbs wrapped around her waist, legs, and pinioned her arms to her sides. A mouth with teeth like a vampire bat’s bit deeply into her neck and she felt the hot gush of blood as whatever held her moaned deep with enjoyment.

The Magus let out a roar of fury and pain that split the air, sending cracks through the very fabric of reality as Magic surged like a freight train beneath her flesh and exploded outwards. The vampiric centipede had time for one doomed shriek before the magic crisped it to ash. The flash fire shot out, snaring each Thrall and destroying it utterly.

The spider-falcon was grabbed last, but spoke before the fire reached him, uttering a heinous, crowing burst of laughter.

“Our masters will feast on your flesh and the flesh of all stinking humans!” It screeched. “We will feast! Our time is coming when all of humanity will bow before us as they did before! YOU WILL ALL PERISH, HUMAN SCUMmmmYEEEEEEEEE _EEEAGHHH_ -” Its scream was mercifully cut short as the last of the fire consumed him.

Kelly staggered, Ace’s arms wrapping tightly around her before her face had an impromptu meeting with the ground.

“I’m alright,” she said, as she got her legs back under her, though Ace seemed highly reluctant to let her go, keeping his arms around her waist.

“Ace, I’m fine,” she insisted, and she was. She felt better than she had in weeks, to be perfectly honest. She looked into his eyes – in her boots they were the same height - and her breath caught at the look in them.

Desire and fire raged in them, a burning spark of flame deep within. He wrapped his arms around her neck and his mouth was on hers. His lips were chapped and soft, and his tongue brushed teasingly against her mouth, and it was as though a switch flicked on in her head.

Her hands gripped his hips, pulling him close, and she returned the kiss, grinding up against him. There was lightning sparking everywhere they touched, she could have sworn, and it was as though the two of them were naked, pressed so tightly together. He whimpered as her fingers tightened on his hips, and she pressed even closer, the clash of their mouths wet and sloppy.

She craved and craved and craved and _craved_ him, her mind almost wild with lust, and wished she could press him to the ground and consume him, claim him utterly. Her mouth suckled at his jaw and he arched, baring his neck to her, his legs trembling. She’d never met someone so wonderfully yielding as him, and it appealed to her most primitive self.

Kelly wanted to climb inside him, to curl herself around his heart and hold it so no one could take it from her. She couldn’t get close enough to him to satisfy the desire that pounded through her veins-

“A _hem_.”

She pulled back, mouth swollen and tender from his kiss, and glared at Gin. He raised an eyebrow at her.

“There will be time for such activities later, Mistress. You need to focus on getting to the Straw Hats right now, or do you want the Thralls to catch up with the Straw Hats? They are powerful, but they have no idea how to deal with Thralls,” Gin said, a gentle reprimand in his voice.

Her face heated and she stepped away from Ace.

“Sorry,” he said, with a sheepish laugh. “Don’t know what got into me.”

She shook her head. “It’s nothing. I was just as…anxious as you,” she said ruefully. “Do you want to continue this later?”

He grinned, bright eyes flashing.

“It would be my pleasure,” he purred, his voice low and almost sultry.

“And mine, I hope,” Kelly said as the two of them went to the side of the roof.

He held out his hand and she took it.

“But of course,” he said, and the two of them began leaping from rooftop to rooftop, moving faster and faster as they went, to an open place where he could take his boat out, Shere and Gin close behind.

 _Why do I trust him so?_ She wondered, watching him out of the corner of her eye. _Why do I feel as though my soul needs him? Why do I crave him? I’ve only known him for such a short period of time. And he’s human. A_ pirate _. I should know better, I_ do _know better! So why…?_

She shook it off. _There are other things to be focused on_ , she thought as they landed on the sand and Ace took out a folded contraption that looked like a small engine attached to folded metal. He put it on the sand.

The metal began to expand and widen, unfolding over and over for several minutes until his speedboat lay there, gleaming and perfectly crafted, the sail furled.

“A Magus in the New World made it for me,” Ace said as he stood in the middle of the opening, his voice tense. Whatever madness of the blood had struck them both was wearing off, leaving in its place a slowly encroaching fear for the pirates who had no clue of the threat approaching. She clambered up behind him, and curled an arm around the mast. Shere leapt into Kelly’s arms and Gin curled around her neck.

“Let’s go!” He yelled, and his legs became flame. The boat shot forward, skimming over the sand, and the Magus held on for dear life.

 _Please let us make it in time,_ she prayed to whatever god would deign to listen. _Please don’t let us be late!_ She thought of the fates that usually befell those who found themselves with a Highborn’s attention on them and closed her eyes.

_May the gods grant us wings below our feet to speed our journey, and strength for the fight ahead._

She’d made her choice. She could not bear to have the deaths of those who’d been her one true friends as a child (even though then, they’d just been _fictional_ ) on her head. She thought about Nami, about _Sanji_ , and about the fate they would meet at the hands of the Thralls, at the hands of the Daemons.

“Over my fucking. _Dead_. **_Body_** ,” she hissed as they sped towards the setting sun.


	19. Calm Before the Storm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things are starting to move. Will the Straw Hats, and Ciel and Ace, reach Alubarna in time?

* * *

**ROBIN**

The strangest thing about it all was that he was so small. So light in her hands that she barely needed to sprout more than six to pull his body from the unforgiving sand. She hadn’t expected it. His body was made from rubber, and that wasn’t the lightest material in the world, after all.

As her hands placed the boy on the sand by her feet, she looked him over. It was a miracle he was still among the living, in all honesty. But then again, Crocodile had been _careless_ , unforgivably so. He’d assumed the sand would do the trick in finishing off the boy, but if Robin had learned anything in her years on the Grand Line, it was that a person had to _make sure_ their enemy was dead. Certain people had alarming tendencies to come back from wounds that should have killed them when their opponents grew arrogant.

Crocodile had underestimated the boy, she thought idly as her hands tossed his hat to her. He had not figured she would do more than give the last set of orders to the “skeleton crew” of Thralls in Nanohana then go directly to Alubarna.

But she was curious. Unbearably so, about this boy, and his name. Monkey D. Luffy.

 _-…the woman cackled. “Oh, aye, I knew Roger. Crazy bastard actually took on a maddened_ deus latêret _– that’s a Magi with the blood of the Gods in them, Robin-chan – who’d kidnapped his first mate.”_

_“Did he win?” Robin asked, munching on one of the enormous sandwiches her friend had packed for their picnic at the beach._

_“He did,” the woman said quietly. “Nearly died in the process. But the thing is, Robin-chan, the Magus may not have been a very powerful_ deus latêret, _not very power at all, but a human without even a Devil’s Fruit to help him should not have been able to even touch hir, much less defeat hir.”_

_“How did he do it, then?” Robin asked._

_Her friend shrugged. “Hell if I know, Robin-chan. All I know is that this crazy ass human comes tearing into my shop, demanding the location of some_ in anima contrita _– that means a Magus who lost their partner and gone mad – and two weeks later he brings his unconscious first mate in, demands I fix him, and then passes out at my feet.” Then she sighed. “Perhaps that’s the power of those with the will of D. They’ve always been good at doing the impossible.”_

_“The will of D?”_

_The woman grinned and ruffled her hair with one enormous hand, startling a laugh from the younger girl._

_“Just a little story passed along among us non-humans. Wherever_ they _come, they bring the storm with them…Don’t worry your head over it. Gods willing, you’ll never have to deal with one of those idiots in your lifetime.”_

_Robin giggled._

_“Shesha, you’re so weird.”…-_

Robin pressed her lips together until the burning left her eyes and her composure was firmly in grasp. Of all the things in the world that could still hurt her, despite the walls she’d had erected years ago, memories of Shesha were some of the worst, right alongside the memories of Professor Clover and the archaeologists of Ohara. Not even what she remembered of…of Saulo and her mother could hurt her as badly.

She looked down at the boy, and wondered why, why, _why_ had she saved him? Perhaps he would have actually died, she thought. The desert sand was a treacherously greedy thing, all too willing to snatch up those who were not capable of evading its grasp, and the boy was near death as things stood.

The will of D.

Gol D. Roger. Jaguar D. Saul.

Monkey D. Luffy.

There was something in this almost broken husk of a boy’s eyes, something that told her _no_ , this boy would not have died to the sands of Arabasta. There was something she couldn’t name, a sort of strength, perhaps determination, she didn’t know. It was the something that had been in Saulo’s eyes when he carried her away from the burning wreckage of her home and her life, protecting her from gunfire, the cannons, and finally from Kuzan, before Shesha had come.

This boy had Saulo’s eyes, she thought.

And it terrified her.

“Why do you fight? You people with the will of D?” the words were a faint whisper that scalded her lips as they passed them.

“What?” the exhausted boy asked, trembling from his wounds.

“N-Nothing,” she said, cursing her slip. He obviously had no clue what she was even talking about.

She heard a crunch behind her, and an exhausted male voice yelling “I finally found you!”

It was the bird-man, the princess’s protector. She turned and raised an eyebrow at the bloodied man staggering towards her. She had overstayed her welcome, she thought, and smiled, amused, at her fellow Devil Fruit user.

“Just in time,” she said and crossed over to the speedy, tamed banawani that would carry her to Alubarna, and hopefully - she would have prayed, but she was older and wiser than the naïve child that had learned to pray at Shesha’s knee – to the Rio Poneglyph she had been searching for for years.

“You might want to care for that boy’s wounds. He was the brave knight who brought your princess back to you, after all,” Robin said as she clambered into the seat perched atop the creature’s back and took a hold of the reins.

She turned away from the two men and snapped the reins twice, and the animal sped off over the sand dunes towards Alubarna. Would the boy live? Would Princess Vivi succeed? Or would Arabasta be torn in half by this delusional civil war?

Robin closed her eyes and breathed slowly, allowing herself only a few short moments of shaking vulnerability before she coiled her composure – as hard as iron and as serene as the calmest of oceans – back into place.

All that mattered was finding the Poneglyph. It meant happiness, if there could be such a thing in this world for the likes of her. Crocodile would have his Arabasta, and she?

She would have her freedom.

(But even the steel walls around her heart could not stop the tiny stirrings of what felt a lot like hope at the thought that maybe that boy _could_ stop Crocodile.

Maybe. Just maybe.)

 _Was this what you meant about the “storm”, Shesha?_ she thought, staring into the distance. For one hazy second, she could have sworn she heard thunderclouds on the horizon.

Her hands clenched into fists around the reins they held.

“Preposterous,” she whispered, and closed her mind to foolish romanticisms.

* * *

**CHOPPER**

He smelled them long before he saw them. A faint haze that reached his nose, like rotting human flesh. He’d seen a lot of things in his short life, especially as Doctor Hirulik’s and then Doctorine’s apprentice. The stench of the dead and dying was not something he was liable to forget. He’d seen and cared for people dying of some of the foulest illnesses known across the oceans, who’d come to Kureha for a desperate cure or just to ease their or their loved one’s pain in their last days.

But this? This was different.

The air had a faint tinge of scent to it, rotting meat mixed with something sharply floral.

Chopper looked around as a fight broke out between Sanji and Zoro.

“Is something wrong, Chopper-san?” Vivi asked, running her dark fingers over the cuff of her sleeve.

He rubbed his nose and sniffled, and the smell lessened.

“Y-Yeah, I just thought I smelled something bad,” he replied, and rubbed his nose again.

“It is probably the smells from Nanohana,” she said with a smile. “The first time I visited, they nearly knocked me over, and I didn’t even have half the nose you have, Chopper-san.”

“Yeah,” Chopper tentatively agreed. “Yeah, it’s probably just that.”

The river came up far too soon, and with Nami’s scantily clad body to fuel Scissors (some animals were so _weird_ , Chopper thought to himself, and that was coming from a half-human, half-reindeer hybrid like himself) they made a decent progress over the river before they sank.

The smell simply got worse, though.

Zoro coughed, and looked around. “Do any of you smell that?” he called.

“Ugh, what is that?” Usopp complained, plugging his nose and paddling the water with his other hand.

Nami shrieked as _something_ rose up from the depths of the river, making all of them forget about the smell. The Rare Catfish, or whatever it was – Chopper wasn’t afraid to admit he’d been screaming his brains out as he clung to Zoro’s head for dear life, so he’d probably missed a few minor pointers somewhere – was promptly knocked out by the kung-fu dugongs that Luffy and Ciel had befriended earlier.

The Leader of the Dugongs (“Call me Mike!” he had said cheerfully to Chopper, clearly remembering that the reindeer was the only one who could translate for the humans) led the way across the river, lines of the dugongs pulling the unconscious catfish with the humans sitting ontop it. But after about five minutes, they stopped, the sudden jerk rocking all of the catfish’s passengers.

“Hey, what’s going on?” Sanji asked, pushing his sunglasses up.

Then, carried on a gust of wind, was the foulest burst of sheer _stench_ Chopper had ever smelled in his _life_. It was the scent of death and decay, of rotting human flesh and meat gone spoiled, with an overwhelming undernote of dying flowers.

One of the dugongs shrieked as it was yanked away from the group and under the water. As all of the dugongs immediately leapt out of the water and landed on the catfish’s back, ringing the pirates. Chopper saw, to his utter horror, a decapitated dugong head float to the top in a pool of blood, only to be yanked under the water by a clawed hand.

“What’s going on?” He asked Mike, as the dugong chittered angrily at the water and at forms approaching from the sky, carrying the stench in their wake.

 _“It’s the Soulless, One-Who-Speaks,”_ he replied with fear in his voice. _“They came to this country when the Crocodile came. They are hunting.”_

“What’s going on? Chopper, what’s happening?” Zoro demanded, drawing his swords. Sanji leapt to his feet.

“I-I don’t know! They said something called the Soulless are hunting and that they came to this country with Crocodile-” A feral screech cut off Chopper’s words as figures exploded from the water, and the figures in the air got closer. The creatures hovered in air, kept aloft by wings or an unseen force.

“Oh gods,” Nami breathed, terror in every word, as Vivi clutched at the other girl’s hands. Usopp was trembling so fiercely Chopper could feel the vibrations in the air even from where he sat. Zoro and Sanji were tense, Sanji’s cigarette burning to embers where it had been dropped, forgotten.

A fierce, awful cackling reverberated through the air, and Chopper shook. _Predators!_ his human and animal sides were _screaming_ , and he had to force back the hysterical urge to leap off the other side of the catfish and swim for his life. He was a Devil Fruit user. He wouldn’t get far before he drowned.

But a thought niggled through his mind, as he looked at those horrific warpings of man, animal, and monster, that perhaps even a death by drowning would be preferable to the death that awaited at the claws and fangs and twisted hands of these creatures.

“A princess and pirates, such a feast!” A creature that looked like a cross between a heron and a lion moaned, and the pirates moved closer to each other, so that they were back to back, Vivi in the middle of their circle.

“Chimera-sama and Ladon-sama promised us a feast! And what a feast it is!” A thing that looked like a crow, human, and horse had been dumped into a blender said with a hoarse giggle. It focused its eyes on Sanji and shrilled a fierce chime. Its beak lunged out, faster than lightning, and jabbed into Sanji’s shoulder.

“Sanji-kun!” Nami yelled, catching the blond as he dropped with a pained scream. Chopper could smell something foul that was seeping into his wound and looked back at the creature that had stabbed him. Its beak dripped with a dark liquid, and Chopper knew immediately it was some sort of poison. He had to go help Sanji, he had to make sure they got that poison out of him because who knew what it could do to Sanji’s wound, or, gods forbid, his bloodstream if it got that far-

But he couldn’t make his legs move.

“We will feast, and it will be on you!” an insect-human hybrid laughed, the chillingly human sound echoed by its companions. Chopper could smell the fear from his friends and the sheer terror of the dugongs.

 _This is not good._ The thought wriggled its way up past the sheer weight of his own mind-numbing fear-

Every one of the abominations jerked their heads to the west, to the far distant shore.

“What?” the heron whispered. Chopper blinked, confused. Was that _fear_ he could hear in its voice?

“Quick, grab the princess-” one of them shrieked, and Vivi was screaming then as she was yanked away from the other pirates.

“Vivi-chan!” Nami yelled, making a desperate grab for the princess as she was lifted into the air by a creature with a moth’s wings and cat’s head. The blue-haired woman thrashed, tears pouring from her eyes as the thing’s prehensile tongue stroked her neck.

“Kill the bitch!” one of the monsters screeched but then a very familiar voice _roared_ and a plume of fire exploded into the sky, sending the Soulless Ones fleeing back.

Vivi crashed into Usopp as a humanoid figure yanked the moth creature down, the monster letting out a doomed animal’s scream as it disappeared beneath the surface of the water.

The water turned red and the Souless Ones _shrieked_ , screaming in a language that made Chopper’s ears ache and blood run from his nose, a foul black pain splitting through his skull. Zoro staggered and went to one knee, and Chopper could see blood run from his nose and eyes.

“Quickly, kill the piratesssarrrr _gh_!” another one of the creatures was yanked down into the water as a very familiar man on a boat zoomed past, crisping the monsters not quick enough to get out of his way to ash.

Chopper’s eyes widened as Luffy’s big brother leapt into the air and turned into a rapidly spinning blade of condensed fire, slicing through three of the hybrids before landing on the back of the catfish. Then there were roars of big cats, and Chopper’s jaw dropped open as a large, sleek panther and a tiger the size of the horse danced through the air.

They used claws and teeth to break limbs and leave gaping holes in wings, forcing the creatures to crash into the water, before leaping back to the catfish and arrowing for another prey to send to their deaths.

The dugongs jumped to the aid of the cats, driving the Soulless Ones into the water with powerful fists and flicks of their tails.

Usopp screamed as a creature that had evaded the attackers grabbed him from behind and made to drag him into the water.

But then the creature was being pulled off him and Usopp staggered into Vivi, who kept him standing. Ichor blood flew into the air as Ciel Russo tore the thing’s arms off with horrific efficiency, before wrapping one black-clawed, vice-like hand around its neck in an implacable grip.

The man’s eyes glittered with something like madness and bloodlust as he clambered up onto the catfish’s back, holding the twitching hybrid in one vice-like hand. It looked to be a cross between a snake, scorpion, and a woman.

“Why’d you keep that one alive, Ciel?” Ace asked, landing beside Vivi. “And where’s my brother?”

“He’ll be in Alubarna, where he’ll face the Crocodile. I need some answers from you, _mèrdik bata_ ,” he hissed, the bulging tendons in his arm straining against the sleeve of his robe.

“It can’t speak if you’re cutting off its air, Ciel,” Ace reprimanded the other man gently, and the tendons eased.

“Well? To whose service are you bound?” Ciel demanded, and the Thrall spat blood in the man’s face.

Ciel wiped the foul liquid off his face. “Ace, some help if you would. Gin-Aido, Shere Khan, tell the dugongs to keep us moving. There should be no more Thralls left to deal with.”

The enormous panther and tiger, both now several shades smaller than they had been when they had taken on the Soulless Ones, let out piping yowls.

 _“It’s time to move out!”_ They said together, the shock of their voices making Chopper startle (he’d never heard either of them speak before, he realized), and the dugongs leapt into the water.

As the catfish started moving, Ace pressed a palm full of fire directly to one of the thing’s – had Ciel called the thing a Thrall? – bleeding stumps. It screamed in a horrifyingly human way, and Chopper shuddered.

“Ciel, what are you doing?” Vivi protested, her voice shaking. “Why are you being so cruel, just kill it-”

The man’s eyes snapped up to meet Vivi’s and the princess recoiled as Ace removed his hand.

“Must I remind you, that all of five minutes ago, this thing would have gleefully _eaten_ you, Nefertari-hime?” Ciel said, devastatingly polite and calm. “I need answers, and untainted fire is the best way to get answers from these things. If we go to Alubarna without knowing all we can, this thing’s masters _will_ kill us. It will kill all of us, and in such terrible ways that not even your worst nightmares could begin to fully comprehend them. Now.”

Ciel turned back to the thrashing creature as Ace pressed a hand to its chest once more.

“Must we continue this?” the man asked, in an almost gentle voice. “You irritate me anymore, and I’ll have Ace burn off your legs.”

The Thrall shook its head frantically, eyes wild with pain. “I, I will…talk!” It slurred.

Ciel’s lips curved into a terrifying parody of a smile, and Chopper shuddered.

* * *

**Meanwhile, in Alubarna…**

One Thrall had survived to bring back news of their failure to its master.

Fear. The feeling was old-familiar and new-strange-familiar. It was familiar with fear. Its masters had made sure that all of them knew fear. And it somewhat remembered fear from before. Before, before, before-

It had been shorter, weaker, helpless in the _before_ , when its masters had come for them, come for them all. It darted into an alley as the sun began to rise, hissing angrily. It should have run far, far away, to find dark places and holes to cower in, to hide from its masters who would be so _angry_ , but it did not know.

If it could have run away, if it could have broken out of the fierce obedience-need beaten into it long, _long_ ago, it would have done so eagerly.

It staggered against the wall, desperate with hunger and fatigue. It needed strength. It hadn’t expected a Magus that strong to interrupt them.

To kill them, the cursed creature had slaughtered them all-

A sack of rags by the wall shifted, revealing a human with ragged hair and the foul stench of the unwashed.

“Hey, leave me t’fuck alone! Find yer own alley to sleep in!” he yelled and the Thrall drooled. Blood, pumping thickly beneath the taut skin, blood, _life_ , it could _smell_ it.

It emerged from the shadows and tackled the man, biting deep into his neck as the prey, prey, _food_ , gurgled, desperately beating at its back and head until it tore through the blood-vein and the prey’s struggles ceased completely.

The Thrall gorged itself on the blood and flesh and organs, feeling power heal its wounds and chase away the fatigue. It moved away from the alley, dancing through the shadows to where its masters were, knowing few people would ever blink twice at the desiccated remains.

Its masters had often told them that the best prey to feast on were ones that would not be missed by humans. Not be _noticed_.

They were right, of course.

It knelt before its masters as it exited the shadows. They were alone, the humans that they’d been forced to be with nowhere to be seen.

Their names could not be pronounced in the human’s tongue, but they were called Ladon and Chimera by the humans and their _presence_ , even while trapped in the bland, fragile human bodies their Contractor demanded they garb themselves in.

“News?” Ladon asked, voice strangely soft in a human’s tonal cords.

“We were not successful. I am the only survivor of the raid, _mokasa, mokasai_ ,” it whispered.

The fear from _before_ returned as Chimera hissed, raspy and hoarse.

“So no one else survived? Did you at least kill _anyone_?” Ladon asked, real annoyance in that strange too-soft voice. “Why were you unable to kill a bunch of pirates? Their strongest fighter is out of commission, or at the very least shouldn’t have been there.”

“T-There was a Magus there. A Magus who decimated our r-ranks, with a man made purely of fire who was just as thorough. We, we could do nothing!” The Thrall pleaded.

Ladon leaned forward. “Go on.”

“A human with a Devil’s Fruit and a Magus whose power was,” the Thrall shuddered. “Their power was beyond any we had come in contact with. The Magus had two fully realized Familiars as well.”

Chimera cackled, the sound making the Thrall twitch uneasily. 

“ _Interesting_ ,” Ladon whispered. “No sign of the other Magus? If I remember correctly, we scented _two_ Magi while on that _thōē mōhē_ island while hunting those two Baroque Works’ fools.”

“We only felt the first Magus’s power. But there was something else. A… _anēkśna_ ,” the Thrall said, remembering the taste of blood.

It involuntarily gulped as both sets of raging, inhuman eyes locked onto it.

“Is that so? Tell me more,” the female Highborn said.

So it did. After it had told its masters everything, Ladon nodded.

“You did well,” she said, then turned to Chimera. “My love, if you would clean things up?”

Chimera cackled. “Finally! I’ve been feeling _peckish_!”

Ladon looked back at the Thrall. Her lips curved into a smile that held no joy, only a deep, awful hunger.

“You failed us,” she said, almost cheerfully. “I do not permit failures.”

And the Thrall knew the blinding, animal-bright shock of true, shaking terror for one split second before Chimera was on it, the Daemon’s human flesh disguise dissolving in the wake of mottled, writhing skin, enormous pincers, and rows of gnashing teeth that bit greedily into its prey.

The Thrall was permitted one high-pitched shriek before it was consumed.

Ladon leaned against the wall and grinned.

It would be fun, she thought. She had not had the pleasure of the _rēkiga_ , the breaking, of a Magus and their family in a very, very long time.

She laughed with true joy then, the sound carrying above the sounds of flesh tearing and greedy slurping, and looked to the sky.

“Come, oh Magi,” she hummed then, the hunting song of her people leaping easily to her lips. “Come oh Bearer of the Blood, let us feast upon your flesh, and drink upon your tears~ My children’s children will know strength of a hundred thousand, for your Life is but mine to take~ Fear us, Oh Magi who denied us~ For we shall come for you~”

It had more…mm, _panache_ in their own language, Ladon thought, and licked some of the blood that had splattered her face.

* * *

**KELLY**

Things were tense, though she had expected that, the air full of a buzzing friction that had everything to do with the blood splattering her clothes and how they had gotten in that condition.

She knelt before Sanji, her fingers clamped tightly around the boy’s vicious wound as she and Chopper worked to draw the poison from his flesh. Nami sat behind Sanji, letting the trembling cook prop his weight against her side.

“It’s good we caught this before it got into your bloodstream.” Kelly’s voice felt hoarse and strange in her mouth, now that the raging bloodlust and fierce fury that had prompted her decimation of the horde had drained away.

Sanji met her eyes, his face dripping sweat and the pupils of his eyes blown wide from pain, and her heart ached for him. She cupped his cheek in one hand and used an infinitesimal amount of Magic to send Sanji into a light sleep. By the time they got to the other side of the river he would awaken and be much healed.

“Wait, what happened? Sanji-kun?!” Nami asked, feeling Sanji slump against her.

“He’s just asleep,” Kelly said quietly. “He needs rest before we reach Alubarna.” Nami met her eyes for a moment. Then she looked hurriedly away.

Kelly sighed and turned back to the others, who watched her with naked curiosity on their faces, except for Ace, who crouched on his heels by the end of the boat.

She stood and rolled her shoulders. Shere and Gin sat by her feet.

“Ciel?” The Magus looked at Usopp.

“Mm?”

“W-why…” he gulped, and then said, this time a little more determinedly, “Why did you…come back? And how did your cats grow so _big_?”

She breathed slowly.

“My cats are shifters. They belonged to a sorcerer before I found them-” hopefully that would suffice, and keep any awkward questions away “-and as for why I came back?”

Kelly sighed.

“If I had not, you would have died. And I am tired of death.”

It wasn’t a lie, Kelly knew that, but it wasn’t the whole truth.

She would probably never be ready to give them that.

_-…her parents would never understand her love for One Piece. It had so many faults, and it wasn’t like she was blind to them, far from it, but...but there was the thing that had drawn her to the series, that she never admitted to anyone, not to any of her friends or even her family._

_She sits on her bed, staring at the picture of the Mugiwara no Ichimi that so proudly adorns the wall beside her bed, at the Wanted Posters she had printed out on special paper from the Internet and tacked to the board over her desk._

_She picks up the Monkey D. Luffy plushie her sister had gotten her for her tenth birthday and sighs._

_“I wish,” Kelly whispers, then feels the sting of tears in her eyes._

_The dark-haired girl rubs her eyes furiously. No one had believed her when she had told them. Not her parents, not her family. No one. She would have to be strong by herself, she knows this to be a fact. She had, after all, accused a well-liked young man of nearly raping her and beating her senseless. No one would believe her. No one had._

_And the sheer injustice of it makes her want to_ scream _._

_She wants to get up, to stalk around the room like an angry, caged tiger, but she hurts too much. So instead she lays back against the wall and closes her eyes._

_She is lonely, she thinks, as she cradles the plush in her bandaged arms. She is lonely for a family that would be behind her every step of the way, to show her she was important and that she_ meant _something. She wants_ nakama _, she thought with a tiny sob. Not friends who hated her, thought she was crazy, thought she was corrupting them, or whatever bullshit that their parents fed them._

_(Her sister would have, but her sister was dead.)_

_She wants people to not leave her, to believe her, to_ love _her._

_“I wish,” she whispers and looks back up at the pirates whom she had grown to love._

_She hears Luffy’s voice in her head, bright and loud and like a hand reaching down into the pit she was sinking into: “Ore no nakama ni aru no!”_

_The other Straw Hats’ hands all reached down alongside their captain’s, calling her name._

_“Hai, sencho,” she whispers back, reaching up to take the outstretched hands, eyes streaming grateful tears-_

_But then she wakes from the trance-dream, and of course there is no Luffy. There are no Straw Hats. And she is alone in her room, one hand stretched out uselessly to empty air._

_She blinks and stares stupidly at the wall for several moments, then lets out a shaky laugh, covering her eyes with her hands._

_“Fuck, I’m such an idiot,” she says, giggling helplessly even as tears sneak past her fingers…-_

She was still as much a fool now as she had ever been, Kelly thought ruefully as the opposite shore grew closer. Still dreaming of friends, and admiration, and _nakama_ , as though such things were meant for the like of her.

The Magus gritted her teeth and shoved the disappointment down as far as she could. She would be fighting one of the Highborn – and didn’t _that_ curdle her blood, considering she hadn’t fought one in _years_ – and she needed to keep all of her attention on the fight ahead.

* * *

As they all dismounted from the catfish-boat, Kelly felt a small whisper of fear. She couldn’t see the Super Spot Billed Duck Squad (or whatever they were called, she couldn’t remember exactly).

She wondered if the Daemons or the Thralls had intercepted them, and her blood ran cold at the idea.

No, she couldn’t allow herself to be swayed by what-if’s and what-could-be’s. The Squad _would_ get here in time to get the pirates to Alubarna.

And if they weren’t…well.

They would burn that bridge if they needed to.

“All right, Nefertari-hime, are you still planning to intercept the Royal and Rebel armies before they clash?” She asked, making her voice as business-like as she could.

Usopp looked up from where he was rousing Sanji from his sleep, and the rest of the pirates turned their eyes to her.

“Well, yes,” Vivi said, sounding confused. “The leader of the Rebel army, I know him, and he’ll-”

“Do you have a Plan B?” Kelly asked. “Because, Nefertari-hime, trying to stop the war won’t be possible.”

“What? Why? Kohza’s my friend, he wouldn’t do anything to me, and he would definitely listen-”

“I’m not talking about Kohza. I’m talking about the hundreds of double agents that Crocodile more than likely has implanted in the Rebel and Royal armies,” Kelly said, interrupting the girl.

Dead silence.

She sighed. “Am I the only one who saw that? How do you think this has gone on for so long? How do you think he’s been able to control so much from behind the scenes? Crocodile may be batshit insane, but he’s certainly no fool. I promise you, Crocodile has agents in both armies, and they’ll kill you before you can step foot near Kohza, if the chaos of war doesn’t kill you first.”

“Then what do we do?” Nami asked, eyes wide.

Kelly sighed. “Luffy will be in Alubarna to take on Crocodile. The rest of you will be dealing with the Baroque Works’ officer agents. The Daemons, however…” she looked at Ace, who nodded his consent. “Ace and I will take care of them. As for you, Viv…Nefertari-hime, you will need to get to palace, and rendezvous with whoever is in charge. You’ll have to do what you can to halt Crocodile’s schemes that way-”

“Hey, what’s that?”

In the distance, a cloud of dust was approaching, and Kelly felt her heart lift as seven forms became visible, racing towards them.

“Looks like your ride’s here,” Kelly said, as Vivi’s joyful cry of “Carue!” was taken up by the other pirates.

“You all right?” Ace asked as he stepped to her side.

“As much as I can be,” she admitted. “Ace, I apologize for getting you involved in this-”

He shook his head. “I want to help. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here. And if my brother’s going to be in Alubarna, I’m going to help.”

She found a smile to give him and touched his arm. “Thank you. I really appreciate it.”

As she clambered back onto Ace’s boat – the two of them, with Gin and Shere, would be taking a different route into the city, to hopefully cut off the Daemons and keep them from intercepting Vivi or the other pirates – she felt her hands tremble. With excitement or fear, she wondered?

It didn’t matter. She would take it, harness it like she had harnessed the fright of her first time on a stage, and do what needed to be done. She had done it before, and she would do it again.

* * *

**Somewhere else…**

“You’ll have to be very careful, because she’s very dangerous.” A rough, male voice was speaking. One of the men who’d been her guard for the long train ride after her sentencing was talking to someone else.

She was cold. Cold and aching and her power was so far away. She hadn’t even realized what a loss it was to be without her Magic. What she had lived through every day in the _before_. On Earth. But these bastards had taken it away, taken it away after helping the Marines to find their village.

“She looks half-dead,” a very familiar voice replied, and the shock of _that_ voice froze her limbs.

“Lucci-san, it took a hundred fully armed Marines and Admiral Aokiji to subdue her. Don’t underestimate her.”

A hand grabbed her and dragged her upright, and she was staring into the eyes of Rob Lucci – the leader of the ultra-deadly CP9.

Her lips trembled, then she spat blood in his face.

He snarled – just like a real big cat would, she thought with a hysterical snort of laughter – and tossed her into the wall.

“Lucci-san, you can’t kill her!” the Government man protested.

“Then she had best learn to obey me,” he said, voice as cold as Arctic ice. He turned and left the room, and the Government agent sighed.

“Gods, if I have to tell the bosses that Lucci-san killed a captured Magus…” he sighed again and shook his head. “Fuck, I’m not getting paid enough for this,” he said and walked out.

She pressed her cheek against the stone floor and dropped into slumber. Maybe she wouldn’t waken from it, she thought hopefully.

“Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. And if I shall die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take,” she whispered the prayer her mother had taught her into the cold, stagnant air of her cell, and drifted off to sleep, sick with hope that when she next awoke it would be to the faces of her mother and her teacher.

She was tired of this cruel, ugly world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _mèrdik bata_ \- Haitian Creole, means "fucking bastard"
> 
>  _mokasa/mokasai_ \- means "lord/lady"
> 
>  _thōē mōhē_ \- means "Little Big", in reference to Little Garden
> 
>  _anēkśna_ \- means "connection"


	20. The Battle Begins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Straw Hats face off against the Baroque Works' officers.

* * *

**MISS DOUBLEFINGER**

Unease snaked down her spine, tiny tendrils of ice that sent shivers all along her body. The Baroque Works’ Officer Agents waited near the middle of the city, for the battle to start and the pirates to arrive. They had been commanded to wait here, in a perfect spot to intercept the pirates. Miss Valentine and Mr. 5 (and wasn’t that still so strange, having to call those two by their new titles all the while trying not to think about just how those two had gotten them?) stood to the side.

Paula, who was called Miss Doublefinger, watched them warily, noting with a great deal of unease the way Mr. 5’s face twitched with every complaint that Miss Merry Christmas voiced. She couldn’t bring herself to tell the other woman to be quiet though, as some deep part of her screeched at the thought of bringing Mr. 5 and Miss Valentine’s attention on her. And she also knew, from long experience with the rotund woman, that trying to quiet her while she complained did nothing but make her angrier. So she remained silent, thankful that her partner at least had some sense in his brain.

Even the normally obnoxious Mr. 2 was silent, eyes occasionally flicking to where Mr. 5 and Miss Valentine stood.

 _He feels it too_ , she realized.

“My back hurts! Hurts hurts hurts! Hu-! You ba-! Ba-!” Miss Merry Christmas complained, and Mr. 4 nodded slowly, his lips shaping each ponderous word in reply.

“I-‘-m s-o-o-r-r-y.”

 _Couldn’t they feel it?!_ Paula wondered, fingers clenching with frustration and fear. The tension and not so subtle rage, the sheer inhumanity that draped over Mr. 5 and Miss Valentine like cloaks.

She wondered if she should at least _try_ to warn the other woman, but a hand on her shoulder stopped her in her tracks. She turned to Daz, who shook his head at her. Anyone else would have suspected the beads of sweat that dewed his dark brown face and almost-bald dome of a head to be a simple result of Arabasta’s oppressive heat, but she knew his homeland in the West Blue had been much, much hotter.

He feared it too, she realized, and knew he was telling her not to draw their attention.

“Oh thank _fuck_!” Mr. 5 roared, after Miss Valentine had whispered something to him. “ _Finally_ , I get to do some killing and don’t have to listen to this fucking hag anymore!”

With the horrified fascination of someone watching a shipwreck, Paula saw Miss Merry Christmas round on the man, and start _ranting at him_. Mr. 2 whispered a vague prayer in that strange language of his, and she felt more than saw Daz tense behind her.

“You insolent whippersnapper!” Miss Merry Christmas barked. “You should-! You’re just an idio-! Idio-! Idio-! Fool! Foo-! Foo-!”

Mr. 5’s head snapped around, and those strange, swirling eyes focused on the rotund woman. Then he looked at Miss Valentine and cocked his head to the side.

The woman sighed. “We really shouldn’t…”

“We do have the _Ārnēā_. They should be doing _something,_ after all.”

“What about the Croc? Won’t he be mad?”

Mr. 5 snorted. “What’s he care, if we get the job done and fulfill our Contract? It’s not like I’m going to do for them all, Ladon, please?”

“Why aren’t you listening?! Fools! Imperti-! Ba-! Ba-!” Miss Merry Christmas spat, and that stupid dog of hers sneezed repeatedly. Miss Valentine’s head turned to the woman, and her eyes bled to match the same color as her brother’s, black-red-silver pools of swirling madness.

Paula closed her eyes as the tension in the air heightened, and she couldn’t breathe, oh Gods, she couldn’t breathe that stupid fool was going to get them all killed-

“Go ahead, Chimera. But only those two.”

“Not just her?”

The woman smiled.

“It wouldn’t be _right_ , to punish only _her_ , now would _it_?” The woman said. “ _Avau mēl utsava_.”

Mr. 5 let out a sound that was not human, that was not even _remotely_ human, and the sound reached deep inside Paula and made something inside her screech and scream and nearly go mad with fear. And then she was turning and running, running for her life as a _thing_ burst from Mr. 5’s flesh, all black skin, many triple jointed limbs, and rows of gnashing teeth.

 _“M’biharūna!_ ” The thing _shrieked_ before it was on Miss Merry Christmas, two limbs reaching out to snare Mr. 4 and the dog in a razor-taloned grip.

As she raced past Miss Valentine, the woman turned to her.

“Go kill the pirates, little humans,” the woman said, her voice doubled, a deeper, raspier voice intertwined with the light feminine one. “You wouldn’t want to make us _angry_ , now would you?” and Paula saw, for the briefest of seconds, an ink black tongue framed by a smiling mouth full of razor-sharp teeth.

Then she focused on running, and on shutting out the doomed screams of her former colleagues.

* * *

**NAMI**

They’d been forced to split up. A horde of those Thrall things had cut them off, and now they were on their own, Ciel and Ace having stayed behind to take care of them. Nami gripped the back of the duck she was riding, and prayed it could get her to the palace.

Hopefully she wouldn’t run into any of the Baroque Works’ officers, but…

_-...“Remember, your first order of business is finding the Baroque Works’ officers and keeping them busy. Vivi needs to get to the palace. Ace and I will have our hands full with the Daemons, and when Luffy arrives he’ll be gunning for Crocodile, so we won’t be able to help you if anything… goes wrong. You’ll also have to deal with the Rebel and Royal armies, because I know the Royal army won’t be able to keep them from getting inside the walls.” Ciel’s eyes were cold and hard, his tone business-like._

_“Are we supposed to just go running all over Alubarna, trying to find them?” Nami protested, wondering if the man would ever look at her. He hadn’t met her eyes once ever since she’d…ever since she’d told him he was a… monster._

_“That won’t be necessary,” the man said, still not looking in her direction, as Luffy’s brother unfolded his boat and set it down on the sand. “They’ll be somewhere near the palace, trying to intercept us. If you head towards the palace, I guarantee you’ll run into them.”_

_He clambered up onto the boat behind Ace, Shere Khan clasped firmly in the arm that wasn’t wrapped around the mast, Gin draped around her shoulders._

_Then Ciel met her eyes, and Nami swallowed when she recognized the emotion in his eyes. Ciel was a… man… who had more strength than a hundred men, who slaughtered dozens of banawanis with barely a scrape to show for it._

_And he was_ terrified _._

_Ciel looked at all of them carefully, strangely, as they clambered onto the backs of the Duck Squad._

_“Good luck,” Ciel said grimly. “You’ll need it.”_

_And as Ace’s lower half turned to flames and the boat shot forward, they set out for Alubarna…-_

Nami shrieked as the duck pulled sharply to the side, nearly flinging her off and almost yanking the reins from her hands.

“So you’re one of those pirates,” a deep male voice said, and Nami’s head jerked towards the sound.

She swallowed as she caught sight of an enormous man dressed in an open black and yellow robe and the traditional pants worn by Arabastan men. He looked more like a mountain than a man, with layers upon layers of muscles straining beneath skin that was only a hair lighter than Vivi’s. His face was dewed with sweat and his mouth strained. He looked like he’d been running from someone…

Then she saw what was inked into his chest: a large tattoo that read the word “One” in bold, black writing.

“Oh shit,” Nami breathed.

Mr. 1 clenched his fist, and she saw the edge of his arm gleam like a sword in the sweltering sun.

“This shouldn’t take long at all,” he said.

* * *

**ZORO**

War gave the air a strange feeling, Zoro thought as he raced through the streets of Arabasta on the back of Carue’s friend. He’d been through islands that had been embroiled in war before. Not too many, as East Blue was pretty damn peaceful, but he’d seen his share of war.

They’d gotten separated, when a bunch of those…those _freaks_ had ambushed them. The Thralls, Ciel had called them. The things that had nearly killed them all. Zoro scowled, remembering what Ciel had yelled at him when he’d gone to draw his sword.

 _-...“D’ya honestly think you can touch them?” the man barked, eyes flashing. “For fuck’s sake Roronoa, they could wipe the floor with you. Ace and I’ll deal with them. Y’all need to handle the god damn Baroque Works’ agents, we don’t have the fucking_ time _to babysit you. Now **go**!”…-_

He was right, and that knowledge burned the green-haired swordsman.

 _Not strong enough_ , he thought. _I’m not strong enough. I need to be_ stronger _._

Then something that felt like a spike-covered cannonball was colliding with the side of the duck he was riding, and the two of them were sent flying. Zoro smashed into the side of a building and felt the mud-covered brick buckle beneath his back before he crashed to the ground. The duck lay over his legs, trapping them underneath the unconscious animal. Zoro felt for a pulse or heartbeat or _something_ that could show him the bird was still alive (because he did _not_ want to tell Carue he’d gotten one of his brothers killed) and found several bleeding, puncture-like holes in the bird’s side.

Moving the bird off his legs, and setting him carefully to the side, Zoro looked at his own leg. He saw several scratches, like bullets had just grazed over the outside of his leg, and one coin-sized puncture that bled sluggishly. Most of the spikes had missed his leg

He got to his feet, testing his leg, and realized his ankle was twisted. He scowled at the inconvenience.

What the _fuck_ had hit them?

A woman’s laugh caught his attention and his head shot up as a woman emerged from the shadows on the opposite side of the street. She was taller than him, with a wildly curly mass of blue hair, paper-pale skin, and clothing that was wildly inappropriate for traveling in the desert, though Zoro suspected that her clothing had been chosen more to draw attention to her shapely body and the exaggerated swing of her hips than for any practical reason.

“The hell are you?” he barked and the woman’s mouth curved into a wry smile.

“Sorry about this, kid. I don’t wanna fight you, but it’s not like I have a choice,” she said and flexed her arm. Zoro’s eyes widened as spikes exploded from it, and she launched herself forward.

He got his sword up in time to parry the blow and give himself enough time to leap out of the way before her spiked-covered fist crashed into the wall, shattering it. He landed and drew his swords, ignoring the sharp twinge in his ankle. He’d been through worse after all.

“You Baroque Works?” He asked, even though he already knew the answer.

The woman smirked. “I am. And you’re faster than I thought you would be.”

“Which one are you?”

The woman flexed a fist, and Zoro’s eyes widened as he realized the spikes grew from her _flesh_.

Vivi hadn’t mentioned that when she’d told them about the main Baroque Works’ agents.

“I’m Miss Doublefinger, kid. And I really am sorry about this, but you’re going to die today,” she said, almost nonchalantly. Zoro placed the hilt of Yubashiri into his mouth, feeling the static in the air and the distant cries of the clashing armies.

War made the air strange, he thought grimly, readying himself for the battle ahead. It always did.

* * *

**CHOPPER ( & USOPP)**

Chopper rested against a tall slab of broken stone, a part of the immense ruins that lay outside the walls of Arabasta. He and Usopp managed to escape the Thralls that had ambushed them, though they had lost track of the ducks that had brought them to Arabasta in the confusion.

Usopp, who lay on the ground beside him, was trying to catch his breath.

“Chopper?” he said, looking up at the sky. It was perfectly blue for miles around, not a cloud to be seen.

“Yeah, Usopp?”

“I…” he swallowed. “I’m scared.”

Chopper shuddered. The fear that coated every inch of Usopp now wasn’t the speckled fear he wore whenever they went onto a new island or when Luffy did something stupid and put their lives in danger. This fear was newer, brighter, the prey-terror Chopper felt deep inside whenever he faced a predator.

“So am I, Usopp,” he said.

_-…it was an attack none of them expected. One moment there were blue skies and nothing by the distant sounds of the royal army and approaching rebel army. Then the skies were full of hundreds of shrieking Thralls, descending towards them with the speed of hundreds of cannonballs._

_Ciel let out a feral shriek in return and leapt into the air, catching a Thrall seconds before it could have made contact with Vivi and tore it apart. Shere Khan and Gin – now full-sized and snarling with rage – joined her, ripping through mutated flesh with razor-sharp claws and fangs. Ace was a spinning knife of pure flame, doing as much damage to the Thralls as Ciel was._

_But the Thralls kept coming and coming and coming and there was no end in sight of the thrashing, demonic beasts. But when Nami nearly had her head taken off by a Thrall, Ciel – eyes blazing – yelled a command at the ducks just as a leech Thrall latched its suckers onto the man’s neck._

_“Get them out of here!” The snakeman screeched, thrashing as the Leech gorged itself on his blood, its mouths moaning in ecstasy._

_The ducks took off in different directions, Chopper and the others hanging on for dear life. Behind them, he heard Ciel screaming in fury, and then he had to focus on getting away…-_

A strange, chittering noise and a very familiar smell brought him out of his trance. Chopper felt his insides freeze with panic and he leapt up, pulling on Usopp’s arm to get him to stand.

“Chopper, let me lay down, I’m tired!” Usopp whined.

“We need to run, I smell the Thralls!” Chopper yelled, and _that_ got his friend up in a flash.

They began to run towards the walls of Arabasta – Ciel had told them that if they ran into Thralls, their only viable defense would be to get away from them as fast as they could – only to skid to a halt as a line of cackling, blurring forms cut them off.

Chopper heard Usopp swear, the smell of his fear spiking, and they turned to flee in the other direction. The reindeer saw the blur before his friend, and latched his teeth in Usopp’s belt and hauled him back just in time as a centipede-like creature erupted from the spot where the sniper had been only a second ago.

“Oh my god, oh my _god_ ,” Usopp was whispering frantic, involuntary prayers as the Thralls formed a circle of cackling, twittering abominations around them. These were different than the monsters that had come to kill them while they crossed the river. These were dull-eyed creatures that watched them with gaping mouths full of razor-silver teethThere was no way out, no path past the dozen or so monsters, Chopper realized with a dawning sense of horror. _They were going to die._

But then the Thralls stopped chittering and…moved back? _What_?...admitting another at the head of their circle. Chopper felt a cold brush of _fear_ ghost down his back at the sight of the new Thrall.

It was the most humanoid of the monsters, appearing to be a light-haired, pale-skinned, curvaceous woman that stood well over seven feet in height, with multi-faceted eyes like a tarantula.

“Today, _we_ feast,” the woman said in a strange, warped voice. “ _Not_ a _sump-tu-ous_ feast, _but_ I _think_ we _can_ make _it_ stretch, _mājhī muē_ , no?”

In unison, the Thralls let out a horrific, piping chitter in agreement and turned their attention back to Chopper and Usopp, staring at them with bright, swirling eyes full of rabid-animal-madness.

“We’re going to die,” Usopp whispered, and the Thralls leapt as one.

* * *

**Elsewhere…**

 The two Daemons in human flesh stood over the scraps of flesh and splatters of blood that remained of the former Mr. 4 and Miss Merry Christmas.

“So…are we now Mr. 4 and Miss Merry Christmas?” Chimera asked, licking his lips as he folded himself back into his human flesh. Ladon shrugged.

“Does it matter? It is time for us to move on to the hunt. I will have the _rēkiga_ , and you will carve the Magus and feast upon her blood,” she said, smiling almost dreamily at the thought

“Don’t you want to feast?” Chimera asked, and let out a surprisingly human giggle as she pulled him close and kissed his mouth, a deep, languorous kiss that made him moan greedily.

“I like my Magi dead, their blood coagulating in their veins. Besides, our _Kārānēsta’ā'ī_ insisted that you have the next Magus we came across,” Ladon said, pulling away and smiling when her brother made a faint noise of protest.

“I’ll save you as much as I can!” He chittered a soft laugh and turned his eyes to the sky.

“Is something the matter?”

“I’m still so hungry,” he said, and his skin bulged strangely, like ill-fitting and too tight clothes. “ _Ladon_ , I’m _still_ so _hungrrrrrrrrrrrrrryyyyyy_ …”

“Then go. The Magus should be at the palace soon,” she said and stood aside so he could leap onto the roof.

“Now,” Ladon smiled, and her own skin began to shift, becoming smoother, and her body curved in strange ways. Now she did not need to hide among other humans…to begin the _rēkiga_ , she knew she would need to draw attention.

She thought about the fear and pain the Magus would feel, about the grief she had been centuries since she last tasted. She thought about the sorrow the Magus would feel once they lost their _anēkśna_ , and her chittering laugh carried to the perfectly cloudless sky.

In a pane of glass that had fallen from a window in the alley and shattered into a thousand pieces, the curve of a pale, gorgeous leg and the sway of a womanly hip could be seen as the Daemon made her way out of the alley.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FOOTNOTES AND TRANSLATIONS  
> *The language of the Daemons, their followers, and is called **Tējavī ēkabha** , which in the Common Tongue (the language normally used by Humans and those sentient beings not of the Magi race) loosely translates to something approximating “From the tongue of the bright one”. Colloquially known as **Tējavī**. The mention of “the bright one” has been assumed that it could perhaps be describing the God of the Daemons, who turned away from his brothers and sisters to forge a peoples that would belong solely to him. It was said that from the blood of his tongue the first intelligent Highborn were created, along with their all-consuming hunger for Magi flesh and blood.
> 
>  
> 
>  **Ārnēā** – _Tējavī_ ; noun: A colloquial term which can be translated as either servants or slaves, depending on the speaker’s inflection and tone of voice. Most often used when referring to Thralls.
> 
>  **Avau mēl utsava** – _Tējavī_ ; phrase: Intimate words spoken before a hunt, usually exchanged between mates. Best translated into “May your hunt be plentiful, my other half.”
> 
>  **M’biharūna** – _Tējavī_ ; exclamation: Colloquial, a war-cry used by higher-ranking Daemons, though not often by the Highborn, as it is considered crass and impatient. Closest translation: “My hunger consumes me, therefore I must feed.”
> 
>  **Mājhī muē** \- _Tējavī_ ; possessive noun: Term of endearment used by med- to high-ranking Daemons and high-ranking Thralls, usually in reference to treasured offspring or those created from one’s own blood and the stolen magic of Magi.
> 
>  **Rēkiga** – _Tējavī_ ; verb/noun: Means “to break” and “the breaking”. Used to describe the process utilized by Daemons to “break” a captured Magus’s mind without losing any of the power in their blood, essentially to render them unable to fight back. Usually involves the torture and slow death of fellow Magi and/or the captured Magus’s family.
> 
>  **Kārānēsta’ā'ī** \- _Tējavī_ ; noun: It loosely translates to mean something along the lines of “the one who I come from”. It is thought to be used when addressing a respected parent or elder.
> 
>  **Anēkśna** – _Tējavī_ ; noun: “Connection” Means a number of things, but is mostly used to describe those who are not Magi but have a strong (usually sexual/romantic, but not always) bond with them, resulting in their blood becoming strongly flavored with Magic, even granting their blood the similar, but much reduced attributes that make a Magi’s blood so desirable.


	21. Rage against the Dying of the Light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Daemons make their moves, and Sanji has a terrifying encounter with one of them.

* * *

Kelly was impressed as Ace kept up with her as they raced through the streets of Alubarna, towards the palace, Shere and Gin pacing them. _He’s fast for a human,_ she thought with a grin.  She glanced a look at her friend, who was almost completely unmarked from the Thralls’ ambush but for a thin slash across one cheek that had already stopped bleeding.

_Very nice_.

In retrospect, Kelly wasn’t quite sure why she felt surprised that he’d managed to keep up with her all this time. He _was_ one of Whitebeard’s sons, after all, and a commander to boot. And a person would be hard pressed to find a better Devil Fruit to fight Daemons and their ilk than one that gave the user control over fire.

Not for the first time she wondered why the hell Ace was doing this.

Curiosity, perhaps?

Concern for his brother was a more likely reason, as was the incentive that she’d laid before him before they’d made the trip to Alubarna.

But it was strange. He was going far, _far_ out of his way in order to help her and the Straw Hats, willing to pit himself against Daemons and Thralls in order to…help her? And it wasn’t as though he didn’t know what Daemons were capable of. He’d been in the New World and all across the Grand Line, so he’d definitely run into them before. And _still_ he was helping her.

The very thought boggled the mind.

She skidded to a halt as a very, very familiar buzzing prickled over her skin, ten times stronger than she’d ever felt before, and there was a dark aura dropping towards them from the sky like a laser-guided missile.

“Move!” she screamed and leapt to the side with Shere at her heels. Gin knocked Ace over, carrying them both out of range of the thing that crashed into the ground with an immense _boom_ , splintering the dry ground in a ten-foot radius where it had landed.

There was a laugh, quiet, vaguely masculine, but with a strange undercurrent of malice that made the hair on the back of Kelly’s neck stand straight up. As the dust cleared, Kelly saw a young, fairly muscled boy that didn’t look much older than Luffy. His hair was a bland, plain brown cut short around his head, his skin was lightly tanned, and his clothes were every bit as plain as the rest of him – an ill-fitting rust-colored tunic and slacks.

But his _eyes_.

Kelly felt a hiss of fear leave her, a sound mirrored by Shere and Gin’s fearsome snarls.

The boy…no, this was no boy, _this_ was no human.

“Daemon,” she whispered, and was answered by the thing’s laugh.

“ _Mĕgēna_ ,” It replied, and turned to face her completely. “I must say, it is smart of you to make sure one of your _anēkśnai_ was with you, but leaving the weaker one alone? That’s not very wise.”

What was it talking about? What the hell did ana…anei… _aneiksenaii_ (was that how it was even pronounced) mean?  

She’d never met a Daemon who used _confusion_ as a way to incapacitate their enemies.

The Daemon laughed. “The blond boy. The blond boy with the delicious blood that our _Ārnēā_ brought to us word of. You should take better care of your whores, _Mĕgēna_.”

Kelly bristled at the insult, before the full comprehension of the monster’s words hit her like a ton of bricks.

_-…“The things the Daemons create, their servants, they’re connected. It’s like a hive-mind of sorts,” Kureha says from her seat by the younger Magus’s bed. “The servants can share their memories with their masters.”_

_“How?” Kelly asks, leaning back against the wall._

_“The Daemons use bits of themselves to create creatures, or to corrupt ones that already exist. If they consume the creatures again, they gain their memories, everything from taste to smell to sight. They’re less…mm, less_ wrong _to the sense of a Magus than their Masters are.”_

_And for a long moment Kureha’s eyes are dark, distant, before she continues._

_“It makes it easier for them to hunt down our families that way.”…-_

A tiny voice in her head was screaming, screaming. It had been screaming before, but muffled, distant. Now it was loud, a siren wailing.

In her mind’s eye she saw Sanji’s injury, where the Thrall had bitten him. She remembered the way she felt about him, the weird, unbearably intense feelings he engendered in her-then what the Daemon said registered, and it was as though every vein in her body had turned to ice.

_The second Daemon was going after Sanji._

Her shock must have shown in her eyes, because the Daemon laughed, cold and chittering.

“Like I said, very stupid to let your whore go wandering off,” the thing said, and its skin began to _bulge_ , twisting and its mouth expanded, rows of silver-sharp teeth replacing the human ones. It grew and grew and Kelly backed away before she could stop herself.

_Highborn!_ Her mind was screeching. _It’s a Highborn!_

And, with a roar of bloodlust and menacing laughter, it leapt.

* * *

**NAMI**

“ _Shitshitshitshit-oh_ shit!”

It was pure luck that she tripped as the deadly slice of air flew over her head. Nami rolled into a ball and wrapped her arms around her head as the pillar shattered under the force of Mr. 1’s blow, sending a rain of rock, clay, and dust raining down on her.

She staggered to her feet and kept running, the Baroque Works’ officer right behind her.

He had underestimated her, and that had saved her life from his first strike.

But her time was running out, and running out very quickly. She’d tried using the staff Usopp had made for her but…if she hadn’t been exhausted from running, she would have fumed at Usopp’s idiocy.

_Great for entertainment at parties,_ her ass. She’d told him to make her something she could actually use in a fight and he’d given her a _toy_. If she fucking survived this, she was going to kill him.

But then.

Then.

Something _hummed_. The air danced as though she was looking at the word through a heat haze and a voice spoke to her. _In_ her. In her head.

Whispering her name. _Nami. Nami. Nami._

“Who are you?” she whispered back, clutching her head and swaying in the middle of the street. Was she going insane? A fine time to do it, but she wasn’t all that surprised.

_Drop!_

The voice was a command, a piercing alarm through her skull, and Nami hit the ground, feeling a rush of air pass over her head. Strands of hair that hadn’t gotten out of the way quick enough fluttered to the ground around her, and Nami stood, facing the Baroque Works’ officer.

_How can I win?_ She thought, watching him. _How can I win against someone like this?_ _Is he made out of metal?_

_…Or is it just something that grows on his skin?_

Her grip tightened on her staff, and she felt the metal roll under her fingers as a thought crystallized in her head on the heels of an idea she wasn’t even sure would work.

_I hope this works._

Mr. 1 lunged forward, his arms coming down in a deadly arc that would separate her head from her shoulders.

There was warmth in her heart, in her arm, in her blood, rolling like the waves in the ocean. She could taste ozone in her mouth as she dropped, dodging the strike, and brought the staff up as she went.

_CALL FOR ME_ , the voice screamed. _CALL FOR ME!_

“ _Fulgur_!” she cried, and the heat poured into her hands, into her staff, as the words sang through the air like a promise, slipping easily from her lips. Mr. 1 cursed as the staff connected with his chest. _“Ad te clamo, nomine testamentum sanctuarii!”_

Lightning leapt from her staff to Mr. 1’s chest. Nami rolled away and to her feet as arcs of pure, yellow fury danced over the man’s brown skin. He staggered as the light faded, and clutched at his arm, the metal having turned the sickly red-brown of rust. He gaped at her, any hint of composure now long gone.

_I did it!_ She thought, amazed.

_We can win,_ the fire inside her whispered. _No…_

_We_ will _win._

* * *

**ZORO**

“You can’t keep up with me, little boy!”

Pain flared in his arm. Zoro yelled, agony and rage – _he hadn’t even felt her coming!_ – thrumming through him. He yanked his arm away from those damned needles, and backed up, trying to ignore the numbness in his fingers.

Miss Doublefinger laughed, and cracked her knuckles, spikes exploding from her fingers.

“I expected something a little bit better from Roronoa Zoro!” she said and then she was in front of him, and her fist was smashing into his stomach, hundreds of razor-sharp needles piercing his flesh. Zoro gagged as the blow knocked him back, bright pain curling in his perforated stomach.

He staggered. She was too fast.

Too damn fast and _he couldn’t hit her_.

The woman smirked, and rested her bloody fist on her hip. “Pathetic, really, but I suppose that’s to be expected from someone from East Blue.”

Anger flared, for a second brighter than the pain. If he couldn’t beat this one enemy, this one _piddling_ officer of Baroque Works – how the hell would he ever manage to survive the rest of the way through the Grand Line? How would he ever managed to defeat _Mihawk_ if he couldn’t win against this one opponent!

How could he tell Luffy his swordsman wasn’t strong enough to stand at the side of the future King of the Pirates?

(How could he ever face Kuina?)

She came again, and he dodged back – but her foot swung up and connected with his chin. Pain exploded through his jaw. He was lifted off his feet and flung backward, crashing into the ground.

Zoro flipped to his feet, and growled as the woman laughed, her amusement mocking and cold.

“Impatient for me to kill you, hmm? Well, I suppose I should hurry this up, if you’re really so eager to die.”

Zoro ground his teeth as the woman began to sway towards him. His head felt faint and his limbs shaky. Blood loss, he realized. Serious blood loss. He had to finish this and finish it _soon_.

_-…“You’ve got no patience, Zoro!” Kuina laughs as his back hits the ground. He glares at her, but it only makes her laugh all the harder._

_He’s_ never _been able to intimidate her, and he probably never will, even when he does get bigger than her. (He seriously hopes he’ll be taller than her one day. If he doesn’t ever get taller than her, she will lord it over him forever, he knows that.)_

_“I can’t hit you,” Zoro grumbles, but takes the hand she offers him and lets her pull him to his feet._

_“Well, you don’t wait for me, that’s all,” she says with the air of someone dispensing information he should already know well enough._

_He blinks, then growls in confusion. “Kuina, what’re you talking about?”_

_Kuina sighs. “Pull your sword up in a block position. Remember, what Papa taught you today?”_

_He nods, and obeys._

_“Now I want you to_ watch _. Watch and wait, like Papa says. Watch my moves, watch where I’m going to strike. You’ve gotta be_ patient _, if you wanna be the best. Use your anger and whatnot to guide your strikes, but use your patience to block any attacks,” she says, and Zoro sees her arm shift and waits, waits,_ waits _-there!_

_He gets his sword up just in time to block the strike, knocking it to the side. Kuina grins, pleased._

_“See! You can be patient! But, uh,” and then she sweeps his feet out from under him in one swift motion, and he groans as his back hits the floor of the dojo. “You aren’t nearly as fast as me, Zoro!”_

_He swears at her, and her laugh is so, so bright…-_

Zoro breathed, slow and steady, and let his feet press solidly against the ground. The woman smiled, eyes cold and ugly as Kuina’s had never been.

“You’re pathetic, brat. I thought I would actually get a decent fight today, but apparently not. Ah, well,” she commented with a mocking laugh.

Anger fizzled up Zoro’s spine, but a strange sort of calm accompanied it. A dark, raging, _demonic_ calm. He closed his eyes, and let the anger curl around each bone, but kept a tight grip on it. Not yet, not yet.

Wait. _Wait_.

“Aren’t you going to plead for your life?” She asked, cruelly amused. “Your captain probably did, when the Boss killed him. Maybe you just have more honor and pride in yourself?”

The rage curled poisonous and hard around his bones, but he kept still, kept himself from reacting to the insult in any way beyond a silent promise to himself to make sure she paid for what she had said, _tenfold_.

He opened his eyes, and the woman blinked, taking a step back. Something prickled over his arms and legs, and the air was heavy.

_Alive_.

“Are you going to attack?” He asked, and he could have sworn he felt a _darkness_ suffusing his words.

“Or are you just going to keep blathering?”

Her face tightened. “You little shit!” Spikes exploded from both arms, and she lunged forward, murder in her eyes.

Wait.

Wait.

Wait-

_Now!_

The words came to his lips as Miss Doublefinger raised her mace-like hands over her head in preparation to strike.

_“Hyakuhachi…Pound…HO!”_ he yelled, and the woman screamed as three slashing projectiles of air that seemed more like steel slammed into her. Spikes shattered, and she went flying, to slam into the wall on the other side of the street. It buckled beneath the force of the blow that had carried her into it, and the wall shattered into debris.

Zoro straightened as the woman staggered upright, bleeding horrendously from several wounds. It had worked. Not as strongly as it could have, and he was still so damned weak…but it had slowed her down.

Her eyes met his, and he smiled at the fear in them.

She was much, _much_ more wary of him now.

* * *

**USOPP & CHOPPER**

If there was anything Chopper was thankful for, it was the fact that he and Usopp could both be _fast_ when they needed to be.

And it helped that the Daemons weren’t really trying to kill them. They were _playing_ with them. Feints to the left and right, claws flicking out to draw minor cuts on their skin. But no definite strike, no lunge for the jugular.

Chopper slammed his antlers into a Thrall that had gotten too close to Usopp, knocking it back. On a normal animal, such a move would have broken its back, and even one of these creatures should have been halted by it.

But the creature, after a gesture from the tarantula-woman who led the monsters, stood back up, its bones or whatever held its skin in place snapping back, and it leered at Chopper, who shuddered.

Usopp was trembling. Exhaustion and despairing terror curled around his scent. Every shot had been ineffective, and the Thralls were getting closer.

The tarantula-woman laughed.

“ _I_ think you _should_ just lay down, _monso_ ,” she said mockingly. “Why don’t you just lay down and die? It’ll be _simp_ - _ler_ for us, and less _pain_ - _ful_ for you. Because you _will_ die.”

Chopper couldn’t deny the painful truth in her words.

But he didn’t want to lay down. He didn’t _want_ to die.

She _tsked_.

“No? Not even _you_ , little _cow_ - _ard_?” she asked of Usopp, who froze. “You aren’t very _ap-pe-tizing_ , but your death would be quick. I could make it so. And you will die anyway, once Ladon- _vāmī_ and Chimera- _ilā_ kill the _mĕgēna_. And even _mag’ra jo_ will make quick work of the others. Why fight? Why not just _die_ , like the other _monso_ did? Like the _monso_ with the hat did?”

Usopp froze.

Chopper ground his teeth.

The woman let out a fierce, chittering laugh, and the rest of the Thralls mimicked her laughter, the cacophony of their combined voices making Chopper’s nerves twang unpleasantly.

“Pathetic! He squealed and cried before the other _Ārnēā!_ Then he died, but that’s to be expected.” The woman’s smile stretched wider than any human’s ever could as she shrugged and the other monsters giggled and snapped their teeth.

Chopper trembled.

_Luffy_. What this monster was saying…

“Y-You’re lying.”

The reindeer jerked his head to Usopp, who was glaring at the woman.

“Oh?” she said, cocking her head to one side.

“Luffy would never lose to someone as pathetic as t-them. E-even your masters…he’ll kick their asses! You’re the pathetic ones! Luffy would n-never do any of that! You’re lying, and he-he’ll kick Crocodile’s ass!” Usopp said, pointing a shaking finger at her. “Luffy’s my c-captain, and I’m not going to l-let a jerk like you in-insult him while you hide behind your freaks!”

The multi-faceted eyes narrowed with rage, and Chopper felt Usopp’s slingshot come up, faster than anything.

“ _You_ would dare-?!”

“ _Kaen Boshi_!”

The woman jerked back, and then she _screamed_. It was an awful, piercing, wailing scream as her long blond hair caught fire. Long claws began scrabbling at her skull, pulling huge chunks of burning flesh and hair from it as she writhed on the ground, surrounded by her keening, shrieking minions, who all looked in as much pain as their Mistress.

Chopper looked at Usopp, who was grinning fit to burst, though the smile trembled. The boy looked down at him, and the grin grew to almost Luffy-like proportions.

“I know how to beat her, Chopper. Let’s kick her ass!” Usopp declared, and flipped his goggles down.

Chopper tried very hard to keep the stars out of his eyes, though it was a struggle.

Usopp was just _too_ damn cool.

* * *

**SANJI**

He was lost.

Not just lost-lost, no, he had officially reached _Zoro_ -levels of lost, and that was rather humiliating. Sanji rubbed his temples as he wandered through the deserted streets of Vivi-chan’s home, trying to keep the palace that lay in the far distance in sight.

The winding streets and hidden passages of the city were proving to be quite an obstacle. He had lost track of the duck that had brought him here when he had run into a group of rebels fighting a group of soldiers, and was forced to make his way on foot. And without the duck, who had obviously known were they were going, he had quickly gotten lost.

Sanji sighed, and ground the stub of his cigarette under his foot. He hoped Nami-chan and Vivi-chan were all right. He hoped none of those…those _things_ had caught up to them. He clenched his fists and picked up speed.

Then a stray thought meandered into his head. _Is Ciel all right?_

Sanji’s cheeks reddened, and he wiped a hand over his face to try and stop the blush.

Of _course_ the scoundrel would be all right. He had taken on all those shitty banana-crocs back at the casino, hadn’t he?

_-…He has only the briefest glance of Ciel being dragged to the ground as the Thralls leap upon him, before he is out of view. But the other man’s screams are ringing in his ears, drowning out even the sounds of the war…-_

Sanji groaned, then slapped himself. The scoundrel would be fine. He was strong, unbelievably so, and in any case, he had Luffy’s equally strong brother with him.

_-…Fire flares, explodes into waves of unceasing destructive force, and Sanji_ knows _he is staring, but he can’t help it as the ships crumple into ash…Ace lands on the railing again and just_ smirks _, a bright and wicked grin that matches Ciel’s answering grin inch for inch, and Sanji feels a weird fluttering in his chest, one that comes back whenever he sees the two of them together or whenever they look at him…-_

Sanji closed his eyes, then looked into the sky.

“There is something _really_ wrong with me,” he said with a long sigh, and shook himself, before continuing on his way.

He had only walked for several minutes when he heard a faint cry. He stopped, his ears cocked, and he heard it again.

“…help…” It was faint and broken, but he heard it.

A woman’s voice, choked with despair, and he was moving before he even realized it, darting down an alley to his right. It was dark, littered with debris from a mortar that must have gone astray and knocked several walls down.

He clambered over one such fallen wall, and found himself in a small courtyard, shaded by the interlocking rooftops of four houses. And in a corner, curled up in the shadows, was a woman.

She looked up as he hurried over to her, and his breath caught in his lungs. She was beautiful, perhaps the most gorgeous woman he’d ever seen, even for the dust and blood that marred the beauty of her face and clothes.

Flawless, pale skin, watery, sapphire blue eyes that trembled. Her blond hair seemed to float around her face, and the torn robes she wore clung to her body’s curves.

Her full, red mouth trembled as he knelt beside her. He grimaced as he saw her leg, bloody and obviously broken as it was.

“I thought,” and her voice was as beautiful as the rest of her, even though the pain made it raspy. “I thought I would be left here!”

“Don’t worry, princess,” he said, and began slowly moving away the debris that had pinned her into the corner.

“I came back to try and find my dog,” she said, sobbing now. “Oh, I am so stupid! It was smarter than me, and it probably escaped already.”

Sanji’s heart softened in the face of her anguish.

“Princess, you are _not_ stupid for worrying about a treasured pet. Wrap your arms around my neck, and I’ll get you to safety.”

Now just where that safety would be, Sanji had no idea. But she would be safer with him than trapped in this alley. She wrapped her arms around his neck.

As carefully as he could, he placed one arm behind her back, and the other beneath her knees.

“This is going to hurt, princess,” he warned, and she buried her head into his neck, letting out only a pained whimper as he lifted her up, into his arms.

He would have to find a safe place to get her before he worried about anything else.

As he walked out of the alley, he didn’t see the smile that curved her lips as she looked over his shoulder, or the shadows that danced over the fingers clasped behind his neck.

* * *

**KELLY**

She was at a serious disadvantage, here in the desert. There would be little water available normally, but this was a desert city that had been suffering through horrendous drought no less.

And there was a godawful panic in her bones that simply could not be thrust down, no matter how hard she tried.

Could Ace get there in time? He had Gin with him, and he was no slouch, but that wouldn’t matter if the other Daemon simply decided to not bother with the hassle and kill Sanji immediately.

The chittering, multi-limbed thing that danced over a gust of wind that shattered the wall behind it laughed, a chilling sound that sent gooseflesh rippling over her arms.

“Don’t worry, _mĕgēna_. My _valage ēk_ will take her time with your whore. She adores the _rēkiga_.” It shook its heads in a parody of affection, then its multiple mouths smiled.

“She’ll rip your whore in half, and drink its blood and tears,” the smiles spread past the point of sanity as Kelly trembled in fury.

“Does that make you angry, _mĕgēna_? That you can’t protect you whore?”

Kelly lunged with a scream, cyclones ripping into existence at her fingertips.

She smashed them into those hateful, horrifying smiles with a roar of “ _VENTUS TOLE VOS_!”

The Daemon shrieked and black blood splattered. It screamed again as Shere darted in, snarling, and hamstringed two of its legs. It stumbled and hit the ground, and looked up at her with rolling, mad, enraged eyes.

“You’ll pay for that!” It shrieked.

“And you’ll pay for the very crime of your existence!” Kelly hissed, and leapt at it once again.

* * *

**SANJI**

“This is bad,” he said, hiding in an alley as two groups of soldiers met a group of rebels. Gunfire shook the air, along with the screams of the dying. And he had a precious burden in his arms, one he had to get to safety.

The woman in his arms trembled.

“Don’t worry, princess,” he assured her. “I’ll keep you safe.”

She shook in his arms as he darted down an alley. Hopefully this would-

“You know,” the woman said after a brief silence, and her voice had a dark note of amusement curling through it. “I never expected a whore of a _mĕgēna_ to be so utterly _stupid_.”

He looked down at her, confusion twisting through him, and then his world was _pain_. Teeth latched onto his neck, and Sanji screamed as they bit deep, his blood gushing. He crashed to the ground, a great weight settling onto his stomach.

The teeth wrenched back, and another gasp of pain left his lips, and he could move his hands.

The woman straddled him, her mouth rimmed with his blood, her once beautiful blue eyes now a mad, awful shade of red.

She smiled as his eyes widened and leaned in close.

“ _Delicious_ ,” she said, and a forked black tongue darted out to swipe over her lips.

Sanji began to struggle, terror shaking his limbs, but he couldn’t move, it felt like a mountain was pinning him to the ground.

“Oh, no need to go so soon,” she purred, the skin around her face bulging and twisting. “Your blood tastes so sweet! **I’m _goIng_ to _take_ mY _time_ wiTh _you_**.”

The skin split, limbs and eyes and teeth growing where they should not, a monster, _this was a monster_. terror blanked out every thought in Sanji’s head.

Limbs with too many joints and fingers that ended in talons curled around him, and Sanji’s back arched as the bones in his arm were snapped, a scream tearing its way free from his throat.

**“Yes! _ScrEam_ , littlE _whore_! You’re _mIne_ , And _no_ one’s _coMing_ to _helP_ you!”** The thing laughed and fastened on of its mouths on Sanji’s neck.

It hurt.

It hurt so much, and he couldn’t make her, it, _whatever_ the thing was stop.

He squirmed, trying to throw her off, and felt a strange pressure against his leg as the thing rutted against him. He shrieked in terror and disgust as he realized what that pressure was.

**“ _KEep_ wrIggling, _whore_! IT _only_ mAkes _me_ moRe _excited_!”** The thing crooned with the mouth not attached to his neck. It ground harder against him, and panic rushed up to mingle with the terror now, white-hot and overwhelming.

He couldn’t get free. _He couldn’t get free._ This thing didn’t want him dead, but he knew what it _did_ want, and the knowledge of that almost broke him. His fingers scrabbled at the skin of the thing, hoping to strike some sort of blow against it, not caring when his fingernails broke and bled.

Talons ripped through his shirt, and spread his legs wide, and the bulk of the _thing_ settled between his legs, rutting against him. The feel of the writhing skin against his own was a horror in of itself.

There was an awful, gut-wrenching keening in the air, and Sanji realized on a distant level that he was making the sound, but he couldn’t stop himself, even as his head was pulled painfully back and a long, black tongue licked at the gaping wound left by rows of shining teeth.

**“So _sWeet_! I _coUld_ feast _on_ yoUU _forever_ …MaYbe _I_ Will!”** The thing crowed with laughter as it tore at his pants. **“ _I_ wOnder _wHat_ you’ll _moAn_ when _I_ hAve _you_ , whore,”** it whispered, and his eyes were stinging with tears, rolling down his cheeks as it began tearing at his pants-

“ _HI-KEN!_ ”

Fire _exploded_ , and the weight was knocked off him, and he could breathe again, he could _move_ again. There was a scream of a wild animal, and a black blur shot by him, snarling.

“Hey, blondie, are you all right?” There were hands on him, and he flinched.

“It’s okay…Sanji, right? It’s me, it’s Ace, Luffy’s brother.” And the terror faded a little, and he looked up, and Ace knelt beside him, fire curling around his shoulders.

He shuddered, and struggled to sit up. Ace looked him over, a hand cupping his neck, keeping his propped upright.

“Did…Did that thing do this to you?” The other man asked, his voice flat and deadly cold.

Sanji bit his lip until he was sure he could talk without bursting into godforsaken, unmanly tears.

“Yes,” he whispered, gritting his teeth.

Ace closed his eyes, and didn’t even flinch when the black blur landed beside him. Sanji recognized the animal instantly.

It was Gin, Ciel’s beloved pet. The panther nuzzled his arm, looking at him worriedly.

“I’m…I’m okay,” he said weakly, raising a bruised arm to stroke at her head. It was a blatant lie, but he couldn’t bear the look in the animal’s strange, silver eyes.

“All right, let’s get you away from here before that thing comes back,” Ace said, and then Sanji was in the other man’s arms. He squeaked, then gasped as pain radiated from his broken arm.

“Damn, sorry,” Ace said, striding away from the alley, and out into the bright sun.

There was a curious coldness in Sanji as Ace sat him down on a barrel near a boarded up store, after nicking some dusty clothes from the building. Ace pulled a small, strange box out of one of his many pockets, and snapped it open. Resting inside was a gleaming ball about the size of a marble, that swirled with deep reds and oranges like a fire opal.

Ace held it up to Sanji’s lips.

“Swallow this, the black-haired pirate said, and Sanji did as he was asked, after shrugging the dusty clothes on with shaking limbs.

Fire left a trail down his throat, and Sanji choked, then _screamed_ as the bones in his broken arm snapped back into place again. The wound in his neck closed, and the pain eased, cuts and bruises fading under the fire rolling in his belly.

He would have pitched headfirst off the barrel if Ace hadn’t grabbed him and held him upright.

“What the _shit_ was that and why the hell did you use it on me?” he said, when he could finally talk. His legs were steady under him, and he felt strong, the pain muted now.

“It was a gift from…a friend I met in the New World,” Ace said affectionately, and stowed the box away in a pocket. “You needed it.”

Gin nudged at Ace’s legs, as an unholy scream rent the air.

“Right, you need to get going,” Ace said, his tone suddenly businesslike again. “I’ll take care of the Daemon.”

“Wait,” Sanji said. “You…You’re going to take that _thing_ on?”

Ace grinned. “Worried about me, blondie?”

But Sanji’s fingers were trembling again, and the panic was trickling back.

“You…you don’t, that thing, that thing will kill you,” the words were spilling out, tumbling out, and he wished the cold was back, instead of this gasping terror that threatened to strangle him, “It’s so powerful, I couldn’t even stop it, I couldn’t even-”

Warm hands cupped his face, and Ace’s forehead pressed against his own.

“Sanji. I will be _all right_ ,” he said, and there was a fond assurance in his voice, and an iron-hard determination. “This isn’t the first monster I’ve fought, and it won’t be the last. You need to go. I saw one of those Baroque guys heading towards the palace. If you take the street behind us, you should intercept him.”

Sanji’s fingers rested on the hands cupping his face, and there was a curious light in his belly.

“But…”

Ace sighed, and then leaned forward. The cook’s eyes shot open as warm, chapped lips brushed over his own in a chaste kiss that lasted for only a second before Ace pulled back, and grinned.

“Go, Sanji.”

And Sanji went.

His mind was curiously blank, and his belly fluttered in a way that would have scared him to death if he wasn’t so shocked.

* * *

**ACE**

He was the biggest idiot that ever lived, and that was saying something, considering he knew some rather colossal idiots.

Taking on a Highborn Daemon, doing all of this, when he should be out there looking for the one who killed Thatch…

What was he _thinking_?

He sighed, and walked towards the sound of unearthly screeching, his hands in his pockets, as casual as if he were going for a stroll at the market. He _hadn’t_ been thinking, if he wanted to be honest with himself. It had been easy, _too_ damned easy, to go along with Ciel, to do as she had asked.

He’d thought nothing of coming with her to this doomed city.

Ciel had promised him information about Blackbeard (and he very much wanted to know how in the hell she had come about that information), but even if she hadn’t it would have been far too easy for her to convince him to stay.

Ace felt Gin fall in step with him.

He thought his willingness to stay with her might have something to do with the warmth inside him. Not the fire he lived with normally, but a deeper warmth, bright and soothing, a fire in his heart that pulled him to her, and she to him.

A deep roar shook the air, a cry of utter fury voiced by a creature that could never be called sane.

He would think about it later, Ace told himself, and rubbed a hand over his lips, where the softness and heat of Sanji’s lips remained.

Claws pulled from the shadows, hauling a body out into the light, its very presence an affront on all that was good in this world. Fire raced down Ace’s arms.

He thought of the bruises and blood on Sanji’s arms. He thought of Ciel’s screams.

(He thought of the blood that pooled around Thatch’s corpse, and the helplessness that had driven him to his knees.)

“Time to die,” he said, as the Daemon lunged at him with a screech.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FOOTNOTES AND TRANSLATIONS  
> *The language of the Magi and their closest and most trusted allies, is known as **inloqu’enim Creatores** , which loosely translates to “the speech of the Creators” in the Common Tongue. Colloquially known as **Sermo** , or, in the Common Tongue, “The Speech”.
> 
> **Mĕgēna** – _Tējavī_ ; noun: The name all Daemons use when addressing Magi. Loosely translated it means something between “Blood scum” and “Magic user”, depending on tone of voice. It has its roots in the very Beginning of time, as records were found detailing the word be used among the First. No one is sure why this word is used to describe Magi.
> 
> **Anēkśnai** – _Tējavī_ ; noun, plural: The plural form of anēkśna, loosely translated to mean “many connections”. It is used to describe multiple persons who have a bond with a Magus, particularly a high-ranking and powerful one. 
> 
> **Fulgur, Ad te clamo, nomine…** \- _Sermo_ ; phrase: Translated in the Common Tongue, it would mean something like “Lightning…To you I call, in the name of the covenant!”
> 
> **Monso** – _Tējavī_ ; noun: A derogatory term used by low-ranking Daemons to describe humans and other prey, best translation means something along the lines of “meat”.
> 
> **-vāmī/-ilā** – _Tējavī_ ; descriptor: Means “lord/lady” when translated into the Common Tongue. Used primarily for upper mid-to-high ranking Daemons.
> 
> **Mag’ra jo** – _Tējavī_ ; noun: The name given to those who have Contracts with high-ranking Daemons. Loosely translates to something like “damned one”.
> 
> **Ārnēā** – _Tējavī_ ; noun: A colloquial term which can be translated as either servants or slaves, depending on the speaker’s inflection and tone of voice. Most often used when referring to Thralls.
> 
> **Valage ēk** – _Tējavī_ ; noun: A term of endearment used by lovers. Closest approximate meaning translates to “darling one”.
> 
> **Rēkiga** – _Tējavī_ ; verb/noun: Means “to break” and “the breaking”. Used to describe the process utilized by Daemons to “break” a captured Magus’s mind without losing any of the power in their blood, essentially to render them unable to fight back. Usually involves the torture and slow death of fellow Magi and/or the captured Magus’s family.
> 
> **Ventus Tole Vos!** – _Sermo_ ; declarative phrase: Best translates to “the wind will take you!” A phrase that, in its many forms, can be used to call a powerful set of cyclones that can be used in battle.


	22. Let the Bodies Hit the Floor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Straw Hats finish their battles against the Baroque Works officers and the Thralls, while Kelly fights for her life against the maddened Chimera.

* * *

**NAMI**

The singing was back in her veins. It was so easy, so unbelievably _easy_ to dance around the man’s strikes, to dodge the blows that would have shattered her bones had they landed.

_Flow like the ocean. Forward and ebb._

“Stay still!” The man grunted, and she dropped, rolling, and-

“ _Fulgur_!” she sang – and really, it _was_ like singing, as simple and easy as navigating the seas – and her staff burst into glorious light as it connected with his shin. He buckled, swiping at her, but she was already past him, spinning on a heel as he crashed to the ground.

But he wasn’t down for long, staggering upright, blades gleaming on his skin, still deadly for all the rust.

The lightning was starting to hurt, her fingers and arms trembling from the sheer force and heat of it. She would have to end this soon.

“Spar Break!” And he was _there_ , right in front of her, and she couldn’t move quickly enough-

_Shit!_

Pain exploded across her chest, and Nami staggered, the lightning fading from her mind. With the hand not holding onto her staff, she placed a hand on her chest, feeling blood pouring from the deep wound. She heard – distantly – the pillars behind her shatter.

“F-fuck,” she hissed.

The man growled, then brought up his arms once again.

 _Take the pain._ The voice was back, like an order in her bones, one she could no more ignore than the call of the sea. _Take the pain, and pull it in. Fight through the pain, or you will die._

Nami staggered back upright. Something _cracked_ deep in her chest, and blood poured out of her mouth.

“How are you still standing, you little bitch?” the panting man asked, the blades growing and growing.

They still looked fragile, but the rust had receded. She stood upright, her staff clenched in her hands.

“ _Just stay down_ ,” the officer snarled, and Nami could hear the whistling the wind made as it rushed past his blades. She looked in his eyes and saw her death there. She looked into his eyes and saw the pain that he would give her.

She _hurt_. She had never felt pain like this, not even when Arlong’s men had tattooed that symbol on her arm. Her entire body trembled with it. She was no powerhouse like Luffy or Zoro or even Sanji. He _could_ kill her and he would do it without thought.

But…

 _Vivi_ , she thought. The princess who had lost everything and given everything to protect her kingdom and her people. She remembered the way the princess shook in the light of the explosion that had killed Igaram. She remembered Vivi’s insistence on finding a doctor for her, even though the civil war still raged and took lives. She remembered Vivi’s tears when faced with the fact that she could not save everyone.

“I will not fall,” she whispered, almost to herself.

She thought of her friends. She thought of her captain. She thought of Vivi.

(And a tiny part of her thought _Bell-mère_ , and the word did not hurt has it had done for years)

There was lightning in her bones. There were waves in her blood.

“Die!”

She would not fall.

She would not fall.

_She would not fall._

“ _Oceanus est an mihi_ ,” she whispered, and there was a roaring glory in her eyes, her lungs. “ _Tempestas est an mihi_.”

The voice sang with joy like the birth of a thousand and one stars in her mind as she darted forward, her pain forgotten, her friends’ faces in her head, the glory of the storm in her hands.

She danced around a slash of air, and brought the staff around, slamming it into the man’s chest before he had a chance to react.

“ _ET EGO IN IPSIS_!” she screamed, and the world exploded with light. She heard the man scream as she was thrown back, crashing into the remains of a pillar.

When the light and the spots in her eyes faded, he stood there still, and it was as though a weight had dropped into her heart.

Had she failed? Had she lost? She-

But with a sound like an immense tree being felled, the man – smoke pouring from his mouth – toppled. The ground shook when he hit it, the shockwave reverberating through her bones.

Nami stared for several minutes at the defeated Baroque Works’ officer, then collapsed herself, resting back against the blood stained debris of the pillar.

“I…I did it,” she said with a shaky laugh, and coughed, blood splattering.

She leaned back, taking shallow breaths, and looked to the brilliant blue sky, a smile that could rival one of Luffy’s stretching her lips painfully wide.

“I _WON_!”

* * *

**ZORO**

She was still fast, but not nearly as much as she had been. About the cook’s speed.

He could work with that.

Blood dripped down his arms. He was weakening, slowly. This needed to end, and it needed to end soon. He didn’t have the strength for another Hyakuhachi.

A fist crashed into the side of his face, spikes peppering his flesh. He chocked, staggered back. One spike had just barely missed his eye.

 _I can’t lose focus,_ he growled at himself. _Not when I’m so-_

“ _Stinger Hedgehog_!”

_Shit!_

Zoro brought his swords up just in time to parry the rapidly spinning ball of spikes that shot at him. He dug his feet into the ground, tightened his grip, lifted, _heaved_ – the ball embedded in the ground several feet away. The dirt crumbled as the woman staggered back up again.

“Is that all?” He asked, just as mockingly as she had before. 

Her face twisted in rage. “I’m going to _kill_ you,” she snarled.

The woman jammed her fingers into her shoulders, which _bulged_ , veins popping up along the pale skin. Muscles began to grow along her arms, legs, body. Her face contorted, bulging, dark red veins popping along the now thick muscles of her neck.

Zoro groaned in annoyance.

“ _Stinger Flail_!”

He darted to the side as the woman rushed at him, her fist full of spikes. The blow crashed into the wall behind him, and Zoro’s eyes widened as the stone disintegrated.

She was definitely a lot stronger and a lot faster than that woman at Whisky Peak.

Zoro planted his feet on the ground and breathed in deep. One strike. One blow, and he would end this.

“ _Santoryu: Gyuki_ ,” he whispered, as the woman lunged at him again.

“Die!” she screamed, but her fists were not fast enough, and she was **_in his way_**.

Spikes _shattered_ , the woman was yelling in pain – “ _Yuzume_ ,” he whispered, the word heavy and cold in his mouth, and he shot forward, his swords connecting with her body.

He skidded to a halt as the woman’s body flew up into the air, streaming blood, before crashing to the ground, and laying prone. Unconscious, if not close to death.

Zoro sheathed his swords, and smiled as he walked past the downed bounty hunter. He remembered Kuina, a long, long time ago, and one of the sayings she’d always been so fond of spouting.

_Talk shit, get hit._

He smirked as he looked back at the woman who had insulted Luffy.

“S’what you get,” he said, and wiped the blood away from his chin.

* * *

**USOPP & CHOPPER**

“DIE _YOU_ LITTLE _SHITS_!”

The leader of the Thralls was frantic now, her strikes haphazard and clumsy. And so were the Thralls, driven to a state of bestial, sloppy fury by their Master’s own rage. It was child’s play to dart around the sloppy blows.

But one thing the Thralls had not slacked on was the tight ring of protection they had wrapped around their master.

It confirmed what Usopp had told him, and what Chopper had seen with his own two eyes.

The Thralls were _connected_ to their master.

Could it be like a hive-mind? Chopper had read of several different types of bugs who were connected with their “Queen”, and performed all necessary tasks so she would have the freedom to give birth to her children.

Though that didn’t explain why she could heal the Thralls when they were hurt. Or why she _did_.

Bugs (and most animals, really) rarely did such a thing, preferring to leave the weak or injured to die. There usually were hundreds more “protectors” after all, and a single drone would hardly be worth the effort…

But he was thinking about these things like he would about actual creatures.

These were _monsters_ , in every term of the word, and he couldn’t think of them as he did with other animals.

A Thrall swiped at Usopp, slicing through the flesh in his arm, and making him drop to his knees. Chopper slammed his antlers into the thing, knocking it back. It lay on the ground for several minutes before the woman noticed, and gestured frantically at it.

When it stood, its body was twisted, still broken by Chopper’s attack. The tarantula-woman shrieked in helpless fury, and Chopper understood.

_She was getting weaker._

He felt Usopp’s leg press against his side, and Chopper looked up into his friend’s eyes.

“Ready, Chopper?” Usopp asked.

“Yep,” Chopper said, and got ready to move.

“Go! _Akushū Boshi!_ _Kemuri Boshi!_ ”

A wave of sheer stench exploded right on the heels of a wave of smoke. The Thralls screeched and staggered, trying to cover their streaming noses.

Chopper darted in, his own nose streaming, and smashed his horns into the Thralls. He tossed one aside, then another, a third, a fourth, a dozen.

He was at the inner circle, and ran with his horns pointed at the ground. The Thralls were scooped up, and flung away, sending the circle into absolute disarray.

Claws raked at his back as the Thralls tried to get back to their Mistress, but with a mighty toss, Chopper sent them flying.

“Chopper! Go!”

The Thralls were shrieking, trying to locate Usopp, but the smoke and stink bombs had done their jobs at hiding the sniper.

Chopper shrank back into his Brain Point, and popped a Rumble Ball into his mouth. He swallowed it quickly, and felt his muscles bulge and warp as he transformed into Arm Point.

The tarantula-woman staggered out of the smoke in front of him, and he ducked down low, before lunging forward.

“ _Kokutei Roseo_!” He yelled, and smashed his hooves into the monster’s stomach. It shrieked as the force propelled it up, out of the smoke, and into the air.

He shrank back into Brain Point, dodging around a Thrall’s mindless swipes.

“Usopp!” He called, darting clear of the smoke.

“ _Hissatsu Kayaku Boshi!_ ”

Several pellets flew from the smoke and cracked into the tarantula-woman’s toppling body, bursting into flame on impact.

The woman let out the most awful sound Chopper had ever heard in his life, a sound like hundreds of nails running down chalkboards, blended with the screaming of the dead and dying. The Thralls began wailing as the flames consumed the monster’s body.

But it was too late, as an immense cracking noise rent the air.

As the smoke cleared, Chopper watched the woman hit the ground and shatter into nothing. The Thralls turned to ash and blood in her wake, collapsing where they had once stood.

Chopper breathed heavily as Usopp stumbled over to stand by him.

“Let’s get away from here, Chopper.”

“Y-Yeah.”

They managed to make it about 30 meters before they both crashed into the ground, exhaustion finally overwhelming them.

“…actually, let’s just stay here for a while,” Usopp said in a muffled voice, his face smashed into the sand.

Chopper giggled, and slumped back, as exhausted as his friend.

* * *

**SANJI**

Every part of him hurt.

He had done it, he had won against that shitty okama, but fucking hell, he _hurt_.

 _At least,_ a nasty part of him said, _at least it wasn’t as bad as the pain that thing would have given you._

Sanji shuddered, and with shaking fingers lit his cigarette, taking a moment to rest against a boarded up shop. That thing wouldn’t bother him again.

_But what if it did?_

“Shut the FUCK _UP_!” His foot lashed out, and decimated the wall he had been leaning on.

As it crumbled, he tried to get his breathing back under control. He was _fine_ , that thing would be dead soon, it _would_.

_What if Ace isn’t strong enough?_

He crushed the cigarette beneath his foot, gouging a hole in the packed dirt.

“Be quiet. Be qui-”

_What if it comes back? What if it finishes the job?_

Sanji’s mouth twisted, and he shook his head.

He…had to find the others.

Ace was strong. Unbelievably strong. He would win.

_He had to._

Sanji straightened, and kept walking. He refused to let the voice speak again.

* * *

**KELLY**

She slammed into the ground, feeling ribs crack. Wind roared, raged, and sliced a talon off. A scream, piercing, keening, inhuman.

Shere leapt, clawed.

The world was sheer madness. She’d never fought like this, or fought _anything_ like this. She’d never faced a true Highborn.

Kelly knew that now.

But the power to face this monster came easily. She dodged around its blows. It was fast, but not _Soru_ -fast. It healed quickly, but it was hobbled by Shere’s earlier attack.

Her mind was cold. She wanted blood. She wanted this thing _dead_.

Wind whipped into a scythe that she brought up to deflect a blow that would have severed her head from her neck if it had landed.

Disengage, leap back, pause, suck in air. She felt Shere’s fur brush along her legs, steadying her. For a moment she felt something in the earth move, and she reached for it. But it was gone, leaving a curious ache in the place where her heart was.

The thing heaved, its fat, squat belly rippling in unpleasant ways, any notion of amusement or fun long gone. It had obviously expected her to die a lot quicker.

But it was hard to kill her. It had always been hard, even when she believed she had no reason to live.

She had reason now. She wanted to live, if only so Gin and Shere wouldn’t cry.

But she also wanted to see Ace’s smile again, to tease Sanji, to see Nami’s eyes as they looked at the sea, to share a beer with Zoro, to listen to Usopp’s stories, to kiss Vivi.

She wanted to hear Luffy’s laugh again.

Power. She felt it now, rumbling in the earth.

Kelly kicked off her boots, and dug her feet into the dry dirt. It wasn’t as wonderful a feeling as moving through the ocean in only her bare skin, but it was _something_ , and _something_ was more than the sheer _nothing_ she’d had since arriving in this kingdom.

She breathed, and opened her eyes. The monster bristled, hissing, shrinking away from whatever it saw in her eyes, or felt in the air.

“Time to die,” she told it.

Words were flowing through her mind, as the wind blew around her and the earth rumbled below her feet.

“ _En contumaciae propiores tenebris_ ,” she whispered, Shere’s snarling mingling with the screech of the Daemon as it staggered to its feet. The earth rumbled beneath her feet, like a great giant turning over in its sleep.

The monster leapt, but she lunged up to meet it head on, the power smashing through her limbs, the scream leaving her mouth like a prayer, _“PUGNO ÆTERNUM IN LUCEM!”_

Power left her hands, not of the elements, but pure light, almost holy light. The light picked the monster up, and it screamed as the light rent deep, bloody burns in the fabric of its unnatural flesh.

The light faded, and the monster dropped, lying prone on the ground.

Kelly wheezed, and braced herself on Shere’s back.

“Mama, we have to finish it off,” the tiger said, and Kelly nodded.

“Right. Shit, I really wish I knew how to use fire, that’d be so handy,” she mused, and laughed. Her limbs felt loose, her muscles like water.

Then the thing stood back up.

Kelly groaned. “You have got to be fucking kidding m-”

A mouth opened on its body, and shadows began to pool around it. It said something in the language of its kind. Although Kelly couldn’t understand the words, she understood the tone well enough, and it made something inside her shiver in animal fear.

“Sis…ter?” It asked plaintively. “Sis…ter? _Sister_? _SISTER?!_ ”

And then a mouth split its body in two, a gaping maw of teeth, a lolling tongue, and a wail exploded into the air. Kelly staggered, blood pouring from her ears as the sheer intensity of the shriek ruptured her eardrums.

Shere was screaming, and the Magus managed to find enough of her magic to wrap around her Familiar, to protect the tiger’s sensitive ears from the assault, before doing the same to her own.

Hearing returned slowly, as the thing clambered upright, limbs sprouting, eyes splitting, joints cracking wetly. Even more so than its previous form, it was becoming a true abomination, losing control of the power that allowed it to maintain some semblance of reason and sanity.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH, MY SISTER!” It wailed. “MY SISTER! _NAIIII, NAIIIIIIIIII_!!”

Kelly knew then, as the thing turned on her with another blood-curdling screech that was the very essence of demented grief and rage, that Ace had won.

But her job had just gotten a lot harder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **TRANSLATIONS AND FOOTNOTES**
> 
>  
> 
>  **Oceanus est an mihi…** \- _Sermo_ ; “The ocean is in me, the storm is in me, and I, in them.”
> 
>  **Akushū Boshi** \- "Stink Star" A stink bomb
> 
>  **En contumaciae propiores tenebris…** \- _Sermo_ ; “In the defiance of the dark, I fight forever in the Light.” A prayer that can be used to turn a lower ranking Daemon to ash in the hands of a Magus. The higher-ranking the Daemon, the less effective it is.
> 
>  **Nai, Nai** – _Tējavī_ ; A lament, one usually used when a mate/very close family member dies at the hands of someone else. Also a promise of vengeance upon the one who caused the death


	23. finis deserti bellum (the end of the desert war)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kelly fights and the rain comes once more to Arabasta.

* * *

**KELLY**

The earth shook, splintering as claws struck the ground wildly, gouging deep tears in the packed dirt, sending clouds of dust into the air. Kelly’s eyes and nose streamed.

Shadows danced at the corners of her eyes, seeking to wrap around her leg, to trip her up so the screeching monster could grab her, but Kelly wove around them, making sure to stay in the light.

 _Fucking Nara-esque abominations_ , she thought. The shadows didn’t seem to be completely under the maddened Daemon’s control, so berserk was the creature, but they seemed to respond well to its fury.

An immense clawed hand cut through the clouds of dust, arrowing right for her. Kelly cursed, called her magic, and it came like a thundering roar, like an unstoppable wave-

Shere _screamed_ , and Kelly faltered, staggering.

Though she couldn’t see her Familiar through the clouds of dust, she could _feel_ the shadows piercing the tiger’s body as surely as if they pierced her own.

She smelled the blood, and heard the delighted shrieks of the maddened monster that crouched over Shere’s twitching body.

_:ma…ma…hurts…help…me:_

Everything bled white at the edges.

She felt wind roaring, thunder cracking across the sky. The dust was blown clear, and the Daemon stumbled back. On the thing’s face there might have been an emotion like fear.

But then Kelly saw her Familiar, her beloved Shere, curled up in a ball below the thing. There was blood pooling around her tiny, tiny body.

_-…“Look, Arashi, this really isn’t a good idea,” Kelly says, putting a hand on her hip as she stares down at the mewling tiger cub. “Where I’m going isn’t the best place for a kid…a cub, I mean.”_

_The great tiger huffs in amusement._

_“Safer with you than as a runt on this island. I would have my daughter live, Magus. If she remains here, it is likely she will either die or be killed by one of the others, for being weak.”_

_Kelly sighs, but finds herself taking the cub in her arms. Her fur is so warm, so soft. And as the little tiger’s eyes open, Kelly sees they are very bright. Her heart turns over in her chest, and she snuggles the cub to her like she would have done to one of her cats at home._

_Arashi makes a sound that might have been a laugh in a human._

_“So?”_

_“Oh, hush.”…-_

Everything was very cold, very distant from her conscious mind. She could feel the earth below her, the air around her, the very distant storms rumbling over countries far, far away, desperate to return.

The Daemon shrieked and lunged forward, distended mouth drooling hundreds of blood-red tongues.

Seals spilled out into the air, glowing sigils writ upon the fabric of the air itself. Kelly stood still, and held out her hands. She could feel the sea inside her. The foam for her veins, the currents for her bones.

The Daemon screeched something in its foul language, and closed the distance in a breath’s time, claws outstretched, shadows curling like knives-

“ _anima autem Oceanus_ ,” Kelly said very simply, as if she were wishing a stranger on the street a good afternoon.

There was the feeling of something clean and cold rushing through her body, spilling out into the air, and the seals flared brighter than the sun.

A scream, an explosion, the wind blowing her hair and clothes back. The smell of ash, of burning flesh, the shriek of shadows.

Then nothing but the quiet whistling of the wind.

When Kelly opened her eyes, she spared only the slightest glance at the pile of ash that remained of the Daemon, before hurrying to her Familiar’s side.

She scooped the shivering tiger into her arms, heedless of the blood that splattered her clothes.

“Ma…ma…”

“Don’t speak, my darling one. I’ll make it all better,” Kelly soothed, and reached deep.

It seemed there was an ocean’s worth of magic to draw on now, bright and gleaming, just waiting for her to reach to it. Power flowed out and into her limbs, into the tiny body she held in her arms. Shere went limp as her injuries healed.

_(Mistress.)_

_Gin_ , she said to her other Familiar, her shoulders relaxing.

(Is Shere all right? I couldn’t reach you before now.)

Kelly looked down at the sleeping tiger in her arms, and felt her eyes water.

_She…She’s fine. Just fine. How’s Ace?_

_(Resting, for now. He fought a hard battle, but managed to kill the Daemon with surprising ease for a human. Though I do suspect this one was the weaker of the two)_

Kelly snorted, rolling her aching shoulders. _No kidding._

_(Mistress, ah…he is a fine man.)_

Kelly looked to the sky, feeling heat in her cheeks. _He is, truly,_ she said back, her eyes going a little dreamy. _I wonder if he-_

Her thoughts were cut off as she saw a tiny speck in the distance, rising steadily. Her eyesight wasn’t as good as her sense of smell, but she knew. She knew who that speck was, and felt her heart turn over in quiet sadness.

She turned around and sat back on the ground, cradling Shere’s limp body in her hands, body braced.

Then the explosion hit. The air screamed under the assault, windows shattering, roofs wrenched from the moorings by the immense shockwave that smashed into them.

A tiny spark guttered and vanished in the middle of the maelstrom, and Kelly let the tears trickle down her face.

She had never known Pell, not really. She hadn’t known the man, beyond the façade she had seen on the screen. But even if she didn’t know him, she could feel sorrow for the loss of his life.

 _A human, though?_ a part of her wondered. _But for a human, we should feel sorrow? Why?_

“Why not?” Kelly asked herself, and the voice quieted.

Just a little.

* * *

“Ma…ma?” Shere stirred after a while, looking quizzically around. “Mama?”

Kelly gathered the tiger into her arms, and nuzzled her. The tears flowed even harder. Shere squirmed around until she was facing the Magus, and looked up at her.

“Mama, why are you crying?”

Kelly laughed wetly, and buried her face in the soft fur, her shoulders hitching.

“Oh Mama…” Shere began purring like a motor.

“Mistress!”

Kelly looked up as Gin and Ace appeared around the corner. She knew her face was red and raw, her eyes aching with tears, but she didn’t care. Gin dove into her arms, curling around Shere, who amped the purring up by eleven.

Ace sat beside her, and Kelly let her head drop to his shoulder.

“You all right?” he asked after a while, not seeming to care that the two of them were sitting in the middle of a street in a city torn by civil war, or that the soldiers and rebels who battled could come upon them at any moment.

But then again, what sane person would try them?

“I could ask you the same question,” Kelly said, feeling no interest in raising her head.

Ace laughed and groaned, rubbing his arm. “It was fun. Got thrown through a couple walls, but I’ve had worse.”

“Only you would think battling a Daemon is fun, you absolute maniac,” Kelly teased.

“What, are you telling me you _didn’t_ have a blast?” Ace asked and Kelly smiled wryly.

“I lost my temper, so no, not really,” she said, and brushed her fingers through her Familiars’ fur. Ace wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

“But you kicked some major ass,” he said, looking at the destroyed buildings around them.

Kelly glanced as he did, and blinked. Part of the destruction could be attributed to the explosion, but not all of it. There were great scorch marks, and several walls (and buildings) had been reduced to a fine powder.

“Huh. Would you look at that,” she mused. She’d been focused on other things at the time, and not had a care in the world for what her magicks had wrought in the world around her – beyond the death of the Daemon. And even after she’d had that, her mind had been only for Shere, and healing her.

Ace laughed again and pulled her close. “Are you sure you’re all right?” he asked.

Kelly shut her eyes, and looked deep inside herself, into the wellspring of Magic that flowed through her like a river. No, not like a river…Like an _ocean_.

And for one moment _they were the sky, the water in the air, the rumble of the earth, the deep pulsing fire of the heart of the world. They were all that was, and all that would ever be, and there was a great song, one that welcomed them with open arms, whispering “you’ve come back, you’ve come back!”_

Kelly opened their eyes again, and smiled, still hearing that song in their- _her_ head. In her head.

“I’m just fine,” she said.

And she was, really. Like walls had fallen away somewhere deep inside her. Ace reached down, and curled his fingers around hers.

“You do realize you’re glowing, right?”

Kelly blinked, and looked down at their intertwined hands. Sure enough, her scales glowed with a faint light, like the color of the ocean under the midday sun.

“Shit, would you look at that,” Kelly said.

Ace sniggered and lay his cheek on top of her head.

“You’re something else.”

But Kelly didn’t hear his words, as her eyes had been drawn elsewhere, to a speck rising in the sky, trailing a pillar of dust and wind behind it. If she concentrated, she could just barely make out the glint of a gold hook.

She grinned, and snuggled into Ace’s side, and felt no shame for that.

“What did you see?” The man asked, curious.

“Your brother is amazing, you know that?” she said with a quiet laugh.

Ace shuddered out a laugh. “He did it?”

“He did.”

They sat together, both of them grinning fit to burst, until the rain came.

And when it came, the world felt cleaner again.

* * *

**TASHIGI**

Shame and guilt were a potent mix. Add helplessness to that mix, and, well…It wasn’t pleasant. To say the least. Her leg burned with agony, but that was nothing compared to the roiling mix of emotions inside her.

 _We failed,_ she thought. _We failed to protect the people of Arabasta, and it was pirates who had to do our job for us._

And oh, didn’t _that_ sting her.

She saw them lying there, unconscious, bleeding, horribly injured. It would be so easy to arrest them now, when they couldn’t put up a fight.

 _They’re pirates,_ a part of her yelled. _They’re pirates, they’re outlaws, they’re criminals, arresting them is justice-_

 _They fought some of the greatest assassins and bounty hunters in the seas, and throughout this portion of the Grand Line_ , another part of her said quietly. _They protected Arabasta when we did not, when we_ could _not. They fought until they could stand no longer._

_How, pray tell, is arresting them justice?_

She didn’t want to listen to that voice. It sounded far too much like her mother.

Her attention caught on their captain. Monkey D. Luffy. He looked so small, covered in bruises and gashes, gaping wounds etched into his flesh by what she assumed was a golden hook. A boy had defeated the Shichibukai Crocodile.

A boy.

Hard to imagine.

_-…“Where is he?” the pirate’s voice snaps like a whip, and she sees fury on his face. There is determination writ into every straining movement, the curve of his frown, the blood and bruises._

_She looks at him, strong and capable, and still standing, and she thinks of herself, bleeding and broken on the ground. She thinks of the careless annoyance in Miss All-Sunday’s tone as she dismissed the Marines, and of the cruel laughter of Crocodile._

_And she tells him the way, because she…_

_Because she is_ weak _, and it burns her to know that she is so weak that she cannot do her duty to the people who need her…-_

“We’ll arrest the pirates,” one of her men said, bringing her sharply out of her memories. “If we-”

Tashigi flung out an arm, halting her men in their tracks.

“No,” she said, and the word burned her like embers in her throat. “No, we will not.”

“Wait, what? Officer-”

“I said no,” she snapped. “You will not touch them, do you understand me-”

“That is a very good choice, Marine- _chan_ ,” came a voice from behind her, and Tashigi whirled.

Two men stood there, flanked by a tiger and a panther with silver eyes. They were alone in the path left by her shivering men, who had backed a considerable distance away from the two.

Her breath stuttered in her lungs. The man to the right – dressed in dark, torn clothing, with jade-green eyes, dark hair, and the nastiest smirk she’d ever seen – was an unknown, though the picture he made suggested absolute danger, but the other…

Tall, muscled, dark-haired and eyed, with his hat perched jauntily on his head, and fire twisting around his body as though it were a part of him. And the tattoo on his arm.

_Portgas D. Ace._

She couldn’t stop herself from swallowing painfully. The second commander of Whitebeard’s fleet, the man who had consumed the Mera Mera no Mi Logia fruit, and one of the most elite pirates on the entirety of the Grand Line stood in front of her.

“It would be a very good idea if you moved along now, Marine-chan,” the man beside him said, his voice as warm and smooth as fine whisky. He cocked his head to the side and smirked.

“I won't be nearly so nice as Miss All-Sunday was, if you get in my way.”

That smirk seemed full of mockery, and Tashigi knew that _he_ knew how easily Crocodile’s partner had disarmed her. There was heat in her cheeks now, and that cruel smile deepened.

Portgas tapped his knuckles against the other man’s shoulder, and jerked his head towards the pirates. Tashigi wondered if the man was also a member of Whitebeard's pirates.

And they began to walk forward, _towards_ her, and Tashigi was backing away before she was even conscious of the movement, stepping aside as they passed by, and her humiliation was complete.

She had stepped aside for _pirates_.

As Portgas knelt by the boy who had defeated Crocodile, his companion stepped in front of him, shielding them both, shielding all the pirates from Tashigi’s line of sight, with the cats flanking him on either side.

 _Just try it_ , they seemed to suggest, with dangerous smiles and folded arms and toothy grins. _Just try to get past us to them._

But Tashigi turned and walked away, her face burning with embarrassment and shame

And she wondered if she had done the right thing.


	24. At the End of the Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Straw Hats leave Arabasta with an additional member, and a great deal more baggage.

* * *

They found him in the early morning, in the cell where they had put him after his arrest.

Well, they found what was _left_ of him, if truth be told.

Blood splattered the walls, pooled and coagulated along the floor. Strips of flesh heaped into a mound that might have once been a human lay half on, half off the destroyed remains of the cot, surrounding by slivers of bone. And a pair of sea-stone handcuffs lay on the floor, cracked and bloody.

The woman who stood in the middle of the room didn’t seem to care about the blood staining her low-heeled boots, or the foul stench that had already made a dozen of the low-ranking Marines helplessly ill.

She was a beautiful woman, with a long mane of white hair and icy blue eyes. She carried herself as a fighter, for all she was a woman some years past her prime, lines from both age and battle creasing her pale face.

She knelt, and pulled a golden hook out of the heap of meat.

The woman wrinkled her nose, shook her head, and stood, carrying the hook carefully in her gloved hand. She walked out of the room into the dark and dingy hallway, and stopped by the man waiting by the door.

He was a tall man, though not so tall as her, and wore the uniform of a Captain in the Marines. His skin was dark and he had a calm, watchful way about him. He held a marine coat over one muscular arm, and nodded to her.

Another woman appeared from behind him, wearing the uniform of a Lieutenant, her short crop of black-brown hair only a shade darker than the color of her skin. She wore a tiny gold stone in the middle of her forehead.

The ice-eyed woman turned to the three Marines who stood on her opposite side.

“This cell will need to be cleaned, and everything within it destroyed, am I understood?” she said, her voice quiet, but no one could mistake the implicit order in her words. “You be the ones in charge of cleaning this, and you must be suited in protective gear from head to toe. I would advised high-powered hoses, if such is available. It must be _scoured_ , is that clear?”

“Yes ma’am!” the men said in unison.

“And take care to mention this to no one,” she said, stripping her gloves off after passing the golden hook to the other woman. “If any pertinent details get out to the public, I will _not_ be pleased.”

She turned her gaze back on the men, and they flinched as one, before snapping their heels together in a brisk salute.

“You are dismissed,” she said, and the men left. She took the coat from the man, who helped her into it, and strode in down the hallway in the opposite direction of the men. Her two subordinates flanked her, easily matching her pace.

Another man stepped out of the office that she had commandeered for her own use while on the island, and saluted.

“Fleet Admiral Sengoku wishes to speak with you,” the man said.

The woman nodded, and stepped past him into the room. The dozen or so Marines working and standing around snapped to attention as she did so, and she waved her hand, spotting the ringing Den Den Mushi.

“Clear the room. I will speak with the Fleet Admiral alone,” she ordered, and her soldiers quickly obeyed.

“Would you like us to leave as well?” the man at her side asked, and the white-haired woman nodded.

“At the door. I want no one to disturb me, Faraji,” she said to him. “Also, Udira, I want you to melt that hook down, and study what you find of it when we return,” she said to the woman. “You can keep the purified gold,” she added, noting with amusement the _gleam_ in the younger woman’s eyes.

Her subordinates saluted, before leaving as well.

She sat at the chair behind the desk, and pulled the receiver to her mouth.

“Hakuryū here.”

_“Is it as bad as was reported?”_

She sniffed.

“Let’s just say I understand why you pulled me away from watching _that man_ to come here. It will be taken care of, though."

_“Is it them?”_

Hakuryū sighed and rubbed her chin. “Yes.”

_“Will we have any trouble?”_

“I believe not. That idiot entered into a Contract with _them_ , and paid the price. A debt was owed, and it was collected upon. We should have no trouble with them any further.”

_“Good. You will return to your duties.”_

“And what of the pirates rumored to be in Arabasta? I have heard that Portgas is one of them. It would be a simple matter to deal with it now.”

There was a silence as she waited for her superior to speak.

 _“Do nothing. They are not a threat to us as of yet, and we_ cannot _have this out, Hakuryū. We do not need attention brought to us, or to you. As far as the public will know, Crocodile will have killed himself, using a poison he carried for such a purpose.”_

“Understood,” the woman said, and after a brief exchange of pleasantries, she hung up the receiver.

The woman leaned back, looking at the wall behind her and the map of the prison island far south of Arabasta that hung there. No, it wouldn’t be a good thing if anyone learned of the details behind Crocodile’s fall, and the pirates who had orchestrated it. And it would be even worse if anyone found out the truth behind his death.

She hummed a faint tune as she folded her hands behind her head. Still, it was a fun thing getting to stretch her legs for a while, even if it was by terrorizing mousy Marines and standing in a room full of reeking death.

It certainly beat the cold war she and her men had been entrenched in with the Revolutionary Army, in any case.

* * *

**Several days later…**

The air was brisk, the sun’s rays just starting to poke out over the horizon. The chill of the previous desert night still lingered, but it bothered none of the figures who stood on the sand.

A duck dressed in the colors of the Super Spot-Billed Duck Squad stood a little off to the side of the two it had ferried to this spot. Curled around it were two immense felines, one with the coloring of a tiger, the other of a panther.

The panther’s eyes were carefully locked on his Mistress and her lover, who were saying goodbye before he would leave Arabasta.

“Will you be all right?” Kelly asked Ace, as he unfolded his boat to full length.

“Have you gone to see Luffy yet?” he asked by way of a reply, and Kelly scowled. First Zoro, now him?

Luffy had woken up yesterday morning, and Kelly had spent the rest of the day studiously avoiding him, and any of the other Straw Hat pirates, much like she had done ever since they had arrived at the castle the day after the war had ended.

Zoro had been the only one who had succeeded in finding her, and that had been a stupidly awkward conversation she wasn’t keen on repeating again. She wasn’t the slightest bit interested in feeling like a shamed child again, for all Zoro had been far too understanding for her own comfort.

She’d nearly killed his captain, and yet he’d…

He’d…

_-…His hand lands on her shoulder for a moment, and she looks down at him in confusion. It squeezes, very briefly, a gesture of comfort she certainly had never expected from him, before he lets go, and steps back._

_Her shoulder is almost painfully warm, and she feels the strength of his hand even after it was removed._

_Then he’s off, wandering down the hallway in the wrong direction, and she doesn’t have the wit to quip about his lack of directional skills…-_

Kelly sighed, and rubbed a hand down her face. He’d told her to go talk to Luffy. Just that. And not because she needed to say sorry, the swordsman hadn’t said a word about it, though surely he must have thought it.

“Will you go talk to him?” Ace asked, and she glared down at him as he stepped closer. She had noticed that she was still growing, and it didn’t seem liable to stop any time soon. Probably just another side effect of being a Snake.

“… _yeah_ , I will,” she promised with a groan, and Ace grinned, all boyish joy and laughter.

She didn’t resist the urge to pull him to her and kiss him, feeling his smile against her mouth and greedily claiming it. His arms came around her neck, and they stayed like that for several moments, until Ace pulled back.

“I need to get going,” he said regretfully, and Kelly nodded.

He moved away, and hopped up on his boat. It would be a straight shot to the ocean from here, and he would get there long before the Marine blockade. But then again, the blockade she remembered had been just barely able to hold the Straw Hats.

And Ace was…well, he was _Ace_. He didn’t have that 500 million bounty for nothing.

That reminded her. “Ace,” she said, and the pirate stopped.

“Ciel, I’m not taking you along with me,” he said, and Kelly scowled at him, remembering their talk two days ago.

“That’s not what I meant, dumbass,” she snapped at him, but then sighed.

Kelly looked at him, and thought of her lover bowed in chains, with the stupid, _stupid_ belief that he wasn’t worthy of a war, that his brothers and father should have never come for him, that they should have let him rot, and she thought of Teach’s awful laughter.

“Remember what I told you,” she said seriously, and held his eyes with her own. She thought about all she had told him of Blackbeard’s powers, and hoped, _prayed_ , it would be enough. “And kick Blackbeard’s ass into next week, will you?”

“Of course,” Ace said, but then paused, and leapt back off the boat. “Ah, I forgot.”

Kelly folded her arms over her chest. “If you left something back at the palace, I’m not going back to get it,” she told him severely.

The man laughed. “No, that’s not it.”

He crossed over to her, and pulled the circle of ruby beads he never took off up over his head. Kelly blinked, and then Ace was slipping it over her head. The necklace nestled against the skin of her throat as though they had been made to rest there.

“A present,” Ace said with a grin, and went back over to his boat.

Kelly touched the beads, feeling how soft and smooth they were, and fought to find words behind the vicious tangle in her throat. She looked at him, as the light of the rising sun haloed his frame from behind him, and still couldn’t find them.

“See ya later, Ciel!” Ace called as his legs turned to fire. “And if my brother lets you out of his sight, stop by the Moby Dick. Pops and my brothers would like to meet you!”

And then he was gone in a cloud of dust and heat, leaving Kelly standing there feeling as though someone had whacked her across the face with a particularly large fish.

“Did he just…did he just ask me to do the pirate equivalent of meeting his parents?” The Magus said numbly, and both of her Familiars giggled helplessly.

She shot them equally annoyed looks.

“Do you like the necklace, Mistress?” Gin asked, stretching out like any ordinary housecat.

Kelly touched the beads with one hand, and couldn’t help her stupidly dazed smile that spread across her face. She had _Portgas D. Ace’s_ necklace. He’d given her his necklace! She’d had a copy of it back home, one she had worn every single day without fail (because she was just that particular brand of weird) and now she had the original!

She breathed slowly.

“Ace gave me his necklace,” she said in quiet wonder.

Kelly walked over to her Familiars and the dozing Duck, and dropped face first onto the sand. The three animals watched her.

“This has been a lovely day,” The Magus’s muffled voice said, her legs kicking up in glee.

“You still have to go talk to Luffy,” Gin reminded her, and her legs flopped back to the sand.

She groaned.

* * *

Kelly stood before the door that led into the room where the Straw Hats had been staying during their time in the palace. Her hand had been resting over the door for the past five minutes as she tried to find the strength to enter. She heard their voices, she’d seen Igaram’s wife (whatever her name was) pushing the cart of food in, and then bringing it out…

But it felt as though there were hands curling like vices around her arm, keeping the motion from happening before it could become fully realized in her muscles. There was a coldness, a nauseating one, in her belly, and a light trembling along her limbs.

She was _scared_.

Kelly breathed slowly, her teeth grinding.

Gin brushed against her legs, Ace’s necklace brushed against the skin of her collarbone, and then she was pushing the door open. The voices died away as she stepped inside, and found herself in the center of attention.

“Ciel!” Luffy was sitting up in bed, his hat perched on his head, a hunk of meat rapidly disappearing down his throat. His eyes were clear and bright, and he looked perfectly fine, for all she knew that he’d been gravely injured.

“Ah,” she said, fighting hard not to fidget. The other pirates were all _watching_ her, and her scars were itching horribly. But she had made a promise to Ace, and she would keep it.

Though nothing on earth (on _any_ earth) would convince her to look at any of the other people in the room.

“It is good…to see you awake,” Kelly said lamely, inwardly wincing at how stupid that sounded. Gin and Shere stuck close by her ankles, looking warily at the pirates around them.

“Mm!” Luffy agreed, and held out the remaining stick of meat. “Want some?”

Caught flat-footed, Kelly could only stare at him.

“No…?” she tried, confused, and Luffy scoffed.

“Wasn’t talking to you, silly. Shere Khan, y’want some?” He asked the cat curling around Kelly’s legs.

Shere stopped, and blinked at him. For the second time today, Kelly felt the words twist up inside her throat, unable to get free. Her Familiar looked up at her, asking for permission. The Magus nodded.

“Go ahead, darling,” she said softly, and couldn’t help the tension that threaded her fingers, curled them into fists, as her Familiar walked over to the bed, and leapt up onto the sheets before Luffy’s crossed legs.

Her shoulders are tense almost to the point of pain as she watched her Familiar carefully move closer to Luffy. The pirate gave her a big smile, and set the hunk of meat down in between them.

“‘m sorry, Shere,” he said, very seriously, and the cat looked up at him warily.

He reached out a hand, and held it out to her. Shere looked back at Kelly, a question in her eyes and the Magus nodded slightly, unable to do anything else, her heart in her throat.

Shere leaned into Luffy’s hand, and the pirate gently stroked her fur for several minutes. Then the two of them turned their attention to gnawing on the meat with gusto.

After Luffy had demolished the rack of meat he had been eating, he turned back to Kelly. And his eyes narrowed, as if he remembered only then what she had done to him, what she was capable of, what she _was_.

“I’m angry at you,” he said bluntly, and Kelly went still. It took a great deal of effort not to stiffen, not to let the Magic coil down her arms in preparation for a blow, a strike, anything-

“That’s why…” she gritted her teeth, and kept on. “I came to apologize. For hurting you.”

It did not hurt, did not sting near as much to just say the words right out – I’m sorry – than it did to simply admit that she needed to apologize.

Her pride was something else, even now, and she felt Gin’s disapproval like a distant touch in her mind.

Luffy’s face screwed up, twisting in confusion, and it was weird to see someone actually breaking the laws of physics in front of her-

“That’s not what I was talking about!” Luffy said, looking at her like she was being deliberately stupid.

Kelly stopped.

“What?” she asked, feeling confused. “But I tried to kill you, why-?”

“You were protecting your precious _nakama_ ,” Luffy said, dismissing her words with a wave of his hand.

As though her nearly ripping his throat out didn’t mean anything. As though the fact that she _would_ _have_ killed him, had Zoro not gotten in the way, didn’t mean anything.

But then his face creased into a truly terrifying glare, all folded-down eyebrows, dark, _furious_ eyes, and a mouth that was a thin, white line.

And it was only her own sense of pride that kept Kelly from taking a step back and _away_ from the ferocity of that look, even as her mouth went dry with distant fear.

“Ace told me,” Luffy said, and he sounded every bit as pissed off as he had when he had faced the Straw Hats’ enemies, and those times when he had seen his crewmates in pain. “Ace told me that you wanted to join his crew and leave us and become his nakama.”

Kelly blinked, caught _really_ off-balance this time.

Well, yes, she had asked Ace if she could go with him, but he had wanted to go alone to hunt down Teach, and she respected that, even if it chafed at her to let him go alone.

But she wasn’t planning on joining _any_ pirate crew, and she had decided that she wasn’t going to hop ship…just yet. After all, the Straw Hats were guaranteed to get out of Arabasta, even with the Marine blockade. And since she’d not gone with Ace, they were her best chance at getting out of the country.

“I wasn’t going to join up with him,” she protested. “I’m not going to become the-the _nakama_ of a bunch of pirates, for fuck’s sake, why are you pissed about that?”

Kelly could _feel_ the way the others in the room stiffened at that, and she saw the annoyance that joined Luffy’s anger. But why did it matter to any of them?

“But you did,” Luffy said, as if he was explaining something to a particularly dumb child. “You’re _our_ nakama, baka-Ciel.”

Everything froze.

Well, it didn’t, not really, but it felt like it did.

Kelly _stared_.

“Wha-”

Luffy rolled his eyes.

“Ace told us you probably didn’t know. But you’re stupid if you didn’t,” Luffy chided. “You’re our nakama, baka-Ciel. _Ours_. Not his, not nobody else’s. And we’re not letting you go, not for nothing.”

“I-I don’t, why-” The words wouldn’t come out properly. She didn’t even know what the words were. “Why, you-you know what I _am_ …”

The words were weak, confused, and she _hated_ _it_ -

“Yeah!” Luffy said, looking confused. “You’re our nakama! Sure, you got some scaly bits, but Chopper’s got fur, so I don’t care. It’s pretty cool!”

It was suddenly very hard to breathe.

“But…” and her voice sounded weak and ragged. “But I tried to kill you, so why-?”

Luffy sighed again, obviously very put-upon.

“Because you were protecting your nakama, baka-Ciel,” he said irritably. “And you’re not going with Ace! So don’t try it. Or we’ll come and drag you back.”

Kelly bristled. “Who the fuck are you, telling me what to do?” she snapped.

Anger was good. Anger was better than that-that weak, floaty feeling in her belly. She clung to it, even as it burned her insides like fire. She didn’t like people telling her what to do, _patronizing_ her-

Luffy sighed, and shot out a hand, latching onto her arm.

“What the f-”

And she went flying as Luffy pulled her over to him. Shere got out of the way as Kelly crashed into the boy’s lap, snarling in fury as he wrapped his arms around her like a rubbery vice.

“I’m your captain, baka-Ciel! And you’re my precious nakama, so hush.”

Kelly thrashed, pulling her anger up and through her in an attempt to burn out that fluttery little part of her that wanted to lean into the hug, to put her forehead into the crook of Luffy’s neck and never move.

“ _MONKEY_ , LET ME GO!” she thundered. Luffy giggled.

“Nope!” And his fingers began to move up and down her sides in a very familiar motion. Oh, no he _wasn’t_ -

“I’LL KILL YOU-FUCKING CHRIST _STOP_ _TICKLING_ _ME_ _ARRRRRGH_!”

“Not until you say you’ll stay!”

The laughter was bubbling up inside her, and she was inches away from giggling, actually _giggling_. God, if that happened, her dignity would _never_ recover.

She thrashed harder, and Luffy was giggling delightedly now, his laughter almost infectious as he tickled her mercilessly.

It occurred to her, rather distantly, that if she really wanted to get out, she could have done so. Easily. She was a Snake and a Magus, and Luffy was still hurt, still exhausted from his fight, she could smell it on him. But she…

How long had it been, since anyone had actually played with her? Since anyone had teased her without trying to hurt? Since someone had touched her so freely? The fact was-

-she didn’t _want_ to get free.

“I hate you so much,” she grumbled, settling down. Luffy giggled.

“Love you too, baka-Ciel,” the boy said, resting his chin on her shoulder.

“Luffy, you shouldn’t be moving around that much,” Chopper protested, and Kelly suddenly remembered that there were more people than just her and Luffy in the room.

 _Fuck_. That was embarrassing.

She growled half-heartedly.

“Lemme up, asshole,” she said irritably.

“Not until you say you’ll stay~!” Luffy said, tightening his grip, warm and soft.

Kelly groaned, even as something inside her tried to relax.

“Fine, you goddamn octopus. I’ll stay. Happy now?”

“Shishishishishi!” Luffy giggled, then released her.

The Magus quickly slipped off the bed, and hurried over the window, Shere and Gin at her feet. She opened it and leapt out, not even bothering to pause as someone inside - someone who wasn’t Luffy - called her name.

She couldn’t stand any more of this.

(She couldn’t bear it any longer.)

* * *

When she had discarded the partial face mask and rolled back her sleeves to enjoy the warm sea breeze, she couldn’t help the quick look she shot to the others lazing on the upper deck. The scales on her neck and around her wrists were clearly visible.

But there were no looks, no strange glances, and no upturned noses.

Zoro had raised a single eyebrow at her, before turning back to the others who were shouting something about Vivi.

Kelly’s shoulders relaxed as Zoro snapped something at them. She thought about the blue-haired princess, grinning at the memory of the private goodbye the woman had given her.

_-…“Ciel, wait!”_

_Kelly turns, and sees Vivi walking down the hallway towards her, dressed in fine clothing, draped gold and turquoise jewelry. It suits her, suits the Princess of this glorious country. Kelly looks closer, and sees the faint redness around her eyes, and knows what she felt during the explosion is truth._

_Pell is dead._

_She shakes the knowledge away – he died defending his home, he died a_ hero _\- and smiles at Vivi._

_“I wanted…I wanted to say goodbye, before you left. And to give you back something you gave me,” the princess says, and smiles, soft and warm at the edges. But there’s something coy, about it._

_And Kelly remembers that this is the girl who became a Baroque Works officer (a lower-ranking one, sure, but still an officer). This is not a girl to underestimate._

_“What did I give you?” Kelly asks, cocking her head to one side. She doesn’t remember giving the princess anything-_

_Warm lips press against hers, and Kelly blinks, startled. Vivi’s arms curl around Kelly’s neck, and it’s…_

_It’s…_

_Vivi pulls back._

_“You gave me a kiss,” she says impishly. “I thought it only right I returned it.”…-_

Kelly grinned, and looked out at the sea, resting her arms on the railing. Gin and Shere were asleep, the day was warm, and she could feel-

The door to the kitchen opened. A scent that was terrifyingly familiar drifted out. And Nico Robin stepped onto the deck, dressed in Nami’s clothes, that utterly calm, utterly _placid_ smile on her lips.

Kelly whirled around all the way, her back hitting the railing. Her fingers – claws now – dug furrows into the wood, and cold shivers spiked down her spine.

_No no no no-_

Panic, fear, _rage_ spurted up so high and fast that it took every inch of her control to keep from leaping over the side of the boat and into the water, to escape.

Gin and Shere Khan snarled and grew, leaping to the ground in front of her, full size and pissed off, and Kelly couldn’t even begin to pull back on the emotions thrumming down their connection.

“I was wondering when we would be off,” Robin said, smiling serenely, though Kelly saw the way her attention twitched to her and the cats, who snarled.

Kelly had known that Robin would be joining the crew, she’d known that-

But-

_“…I do wonder how much an adult Sea Snake would be worth on the slave market these days…”_

Robin smiled as the rest of the crew freaked out, but Kelly knew that one eye was on her and her cats at all times, even as the Straw Hats ran around like headless chickens. (Or horny ones, in Sanji’s case)

Someone who’d survived being hunted by the World Government for years wouldn’t take her eyes off the greatest threats on the ship.

Something inside Kelly curdled like sour milk-… _“You know how much money we can make off a scale of hers? Hold the bitch down, and we’ll get her ready for market!”_ …- and she couldn’t breathe-

“Allow me to join your nakama,” Robin said, and Kelly went still.

_-…“…how much a Sea Snake would be worth…”…-_

“You forced me to live when I wished to die,” Robin said, as she sat back, folding her arms behind her head. “I have no place to go to, nor to return to. You should take responsibility.”

Kelly could feel herself trembling, but she couldn’t stop it. Of course Robin would join the crew, Robin was one of Luffy’s nakama (she would become one), and Kelly didn’t have any right to express her fear.

Robin had more of a right on this ship than Kelly did, after all.

But that didn’t stop the fear. That didn’t stop the terror. She’d looked into Robin’s eyes and seen what Kelly had seen in so many others – _you are lesser than me, because you are not_ human – and it was terrifying.

But then…there was Luffy’s voice, sounding…annoyed? What-?

“Why the hell should I do that?” he asked the woman. “You hurt Ciel!”

There was silence for several seconds after that, long and awkward and Kelly felt her mind slow down, moving like oil around the words.

_You hurt Ciel._

Something fluttered in her stomach, light and soft, and she…it was…this was…

Robin looked startled, to say the least. Her eyes flickered over to Kelly, and back to Luffy. All of the Straw Hats were dead silent.

“I am sorry,” Robin said, very quietly.

Luffy huffed out an impatient breath. “Not to me, stupid,” he said.

Robin turned to me, and the Magus couldn’t help the flinch that shook her. She paused, something flickering across her face like quicksilver, but then there was a green wall between Kelly and her.

Zoro stood there, arms crossed over his chest, not letting Robin take a step closer. Shere and Gin flanked him on either side, tails thrashing, muscles coiled and bunched.

They…they were…

A lump rose in her throat.

They were _protecting_ her.

Kelly breathed in deep, swallowed the awful stinging in her throat, and firmed her shoulders. She was better than this, and stronger than this. And it didn’t matter what she felt, when it came down to it.

Robin had to join the crew, and that was the end of it. Her own feelings needed to be set aside. The Magus laid a hand on Zoro’s shoulder, just as he had done to her several days ago, and looked at Robin.

“I am sorry for my words,” Robin said softly, and for a moment there was something painful in her eyes.

“It’s all right,” Kelly said, even though it wasn’t, not really.

Robin had more right on this ship, Kelly thought, and managed to look the other woman in the eyes. There was a burning in her eyes and throat, and she needed to find a private place to be, _right_ _now_.

“I accept your apology,” The Magus said, and quickly hurried past Zoro, and through the door that led to the lower levels.

She hurried to her small room, Gin and Shere right behind her, and quickly shut the door behind her. A flick of her fingers activated the seals on the walls, granting total privacy from anyone who may try to listen – though she would need to renew them soon.

Kelly stood in the middle of room for a long moment before her knees buckled.

Gin and Shere crawled into her arms, purring fiercely, even as tears poured down her face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, Pell is actually dead. This isn't the sort of story where someone without an absolute ton of power could just walk away from the Ground Zero of a borderline nuclear explosion.


	25. Look to the Sky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arriving at Jaya, meeting some new friends, and a mission from a ghost.

* * *

**DATE:** _I have honestly no idea. I don’t want to ask_ anyone _not now_

 **MY LOCATION:** _My room on the Merry_

 **PLACE:** _Three days away from Arabasta_

 

_Luffy, he. He._

_I don’t know why he would-_

[Words are heavily scratched out, and there are tear stains on the page.]

_I can’t do this, I can’t do this it hurts, why would he do this, why would he say that. It’s Robin, she’s supposed to be their nakama, not me._

_I keep flinching whenever she passes by me, and Sanji keeps…_

_He keeps_ swooning _over her, and I can tell the others are starting to like her too, even Luffy, and I’m still so sc-_

[More scratched out words]

_I don’t want…It was supposed to be simple. It was supposed to just be a ride to the New World, they weren’t supposed to be real, I wasn’t supposed to care what they think, I wasn’t-_

_Robin has more of a right on this ship than I ever did._

_I can’t forget that. I can’t, I can’t I can’t_

_…_

_Nami? Why is she at the door?_

_Be right back._

_~KL_

* * *

The night was calm, the air hanging dead, the ocean deceptively still under the boat. The only light in the kitchen came from the bright moon spilling in from the windows and under the door, and the single candle that Nami had lit.

Kelly sat opposite to the smaller woman, perfectly still, wondering what Nami wanted-

“Before we met,” Nami said quietly, her shoulders trembling. “Before we met, I lived in a village called Cocoyashi, in East Blue.”

Was Nami really going to say what she thought she was?

“When I was a little girl, I lived with my sister Nojiko and my mother…” Nami trailed off, her voice cracking. “My mother Bell-mère.”

She was, Kelly realized with a quiet sort of wonder.

Nami reached out, pale and small in the candlelight. A plea for comfort, and one that Kelly recognized.

The Magus’s hand curled at her side, then eased as she placed it by Nami’s, palm facing open, her scales bared to the light. And then Nami’s hand curled into hers, soft and warm.

“When I was young, fishmen came to our village,” Nami whispered, and Kelly listened.

Their fingers curled together, as even as tears spilled over Nami’s cheeks, even as the still night lightened to the glorious radiance of day.

It was strange, Kelly thought later, remembering how Nami’s arms had wrapped around her waist at the end of their talk, and how easy it had been to return the hug, how easy and right and _warm_.

She had missed warmth.

* * *

**Several days later…**

The ship rocked under her feet, and it was only her reflexes that kept her from crashing headfirst into the wall. The seals that she had been reapplying to the wood fizzled away as she fought to keep her balance, and Shere and Gin yowled in annoyance, woken from their naps by the sudden movements.

“What the fuck?” Kelly swore as the sea thrashed like a living being under her, and she reached _out_ -

She felt a _thing_ against her senses, made from old, old wood and metal and broken bits of bone and cloth in the ocean. It was a ship, Kelly realized, one far too old to be anything made in the past decade.

But then she felt something else, something alive. Multiple somethings.

The somethings _moved_ , coiling together many miles below her feet, over and around each other, and Kelly got the impression of water sliding over slick scales that sparkled with greens and blues-

“Mistress?” Gin asked.

Kelly couldn’t help the ridiculous smile that cracked her face in half, and she reached out yet again, calling to the somethings. They responded sleepily but curiously, as Kelly hurriedly pulled on her jacket and boots.

“Mama?” Shere asked, curling up by Gin’s side.

Kelly turned back to her darling Familiars, and laughed, bright and airy and open.

“Sea snakes!” she said reverently. “There are _sea_ _snakes_ here!”

And she rushed out the door, up the stairs, through the kitchen, and out into the light. She noticed the debris littering the deck, and the pirates gathered around a device that trailed three ropes into the water.

Kelly hurried to the side of the ship and quickly stripped off her boots.

She wanted desperately to take off her jacket and strip bare, to feel the ocean against her skin and greet the snakes in only her scales, but she was all too aware of the pirates – and _Robin_ \- watching her.

With a quiet reassurance to Gin and Shere - who both wished her good luck - she leapt over the side and dove straight into the water, ignoring the shocked calls of the pirates.

The water was warm and clear, and it felt like all the panic and fear and _grime_ that she had accumulated ever since they had left Arabasta (ever since she had boarded this ship) was being washed away.

How long had it been since she had been in the ocean? How many weeks, how many _months_ had it been since she had indulged herself in the glory of the ocean, in the deep heartbeat that matched the one in her chest? Kelly closed her eyes, feeling the water that supported all Life curling around her.

A call from below her interrupted her meditation, and she laughed at the almost petulant nature of it.

“My bad, my bad. I’ll be right there.”

She caught sight of three barrels that carried three presences she recognized, and giggled. The suits that Luffy, Sanji, and Zoro used were ridiculous looking things, all bulky and made of wood, with their legs sticking out of the bottom like toothpicks.

But in front of them, rising up like a ghost from the deep, was a flat head that sparkled in the dim light, and dark eyes that gleamed. She swam past the barrels and in front of those eyes, and called out.

The enormous sea snake flicked its tongue out, tasting her scent, and tasting the scent of her Magic. It moved closer, undulating around her in what was very obviously joy, its voice like the ripples of the current.

 _Magus, Magus, Magus,_ it sang, the song so full of welcome that tears stung at Kelly’s eyes.

She brushed her fingers along the scales, and giggled again, dancing in the water around it, her hair floating free around her face.

 _Come, Magus,_ it – no, _she_ – whispered. And Kelly swam down into the darkness that wasn’t so dark to her eyes, and felt other snakes rise up to greet her.

The water was warm, and she felt happy and surrounded by love and a distant sense of family that far surpassed even the ties of blood. It was kin to the feeling she had when she was deep in her Magic.

She didn’t know how long she stayed down in the nest, crooning to the snakes, running fingers over the little ones, and brushing fingers of magic over the quivering bellies of those yet to give birth. The snakes told her stories of the ocean, of the warm lands they came from, and the lands they would go to again.

Kelly knew she could have stayed down there forever.

But she felt the beads of the necklace Ace had given her pressing against her collarbone, and looked up, to see a great shape – _turtle, one of the World Eater’s children_ , the snake that called itself Pachua whispered to her.

And the Magus felt Sanji, Luffy, and Zoro vanish inside its mouth, along with the remains of the boat she had sensed earlier.

Kelly wanted to stay down here. She wanted to join the snakes when they eventually made their trip to the warm lands to birth their children. She would be welcomed, she knew that for a fact.

 _But_ …

She looked towards the sun in the far distance above, its light made blurry and faded by the water that lay between her and it. And Kelly sighed.

“Damn,” she said.

_God damn it._

* * *

Kelly leapt on the railing, knocking what looked like a poorly dressed monkey flat on his face.

“Maa, my bad,” she said without a hint of an apology.

The snakes whispered their goodbyes as they spiraled down deep into the ocean. Her throat went tight with longing even as she quickly squeezed the water out of her hair, and jumped down on the deck.

“Sounds like you all were having quite the party,” she said to Nami, who smiled with only the slightest bit of hesitation.

That _hurt_ , but.

It was better. It was. It was. It wa-

“What were you doing?” Robin asked, and the smile that had spread over Kelly’s face in response to Nami’s faded away.

“I really don’t think that’s any of your business,” Kelly said coldly, and began to efficiently braid her hair, her eyes narrowed at the woman.

Something flashed across Robin’s face, far too quick for Kelly to tell what it was, and the woman backed down. Oh, the gesture was subtle, far too subtle for anyone else to tell, but it was _there_.

The monkey-humanoid-thing staggered back up and loomed over Kelly.

“Oi! Watch where you’re going, clumsy human! You knocked me over!” It-he?-barked.

“I think I take offense,” Kelly said, letting her irritation curve her mouth into a very dangerous smile, one that showed _all_ of her teeth. “Who might you be, monkey-boy?”

“I am Masira, King of the Salvagers-”

“BOSS, _HOLY SHIT!_ ”

The shout came from the monkey’s ship, promptly disrupting whatever the monkey had been about to say, and Kelly noticed it was nighttime – or, at least, the sun was no longer shining.

A great shadow fell over the ship, and Kelly hummed as everyone proceeded to have seven heart attacks simultaneously. She quickly scooped Shere and Gin up into her arms, before anchoring herself to the floorboards as the Merry zoomed away from the monsters like it had just been injected with jet fuel on steroids.

 _:Wheeeeee!:_ Shere Khan bugled, her tongue flapping in the wind like a dog’s, while Gin buried his face into Kelly’s shoulder and groaned in annoyance.

 _Getting to Skypiea’s going to kill you,_ Kelly thought with a smirk.

_(Don’t remind me, Mistress.)_

* * *

She didn’t remember much of Mock Town, or Jaya in particular. Her strongest memories of the place were of Montblanc Cricket, of course, but also of-

Her gloved hands curled into fists as she walked down the rough cobblestone street that comprised Mock Town’s main road, casually dodging around the fights that erupted occasionally.

Blackbeard. Edward Teach. That slimy, traitorous piece of shit who sold Ace to the fucking World Government-

 _(Mistress, perhaps it would be best if you got away from the rest of the humans)_ Gin called through their bond.

Kelly realized her magic was rolling, trying to surge out from under her skin, and fought to pull it back.

_I’m fine, Gin. Just need a drink._

A strong one, preferably, one that scorched her insides like fire. She stepped inside one of the half dozen dive bars she’d passed, and looked around.

It was small, dark wood walls barely illuminated by the wall sconces that flickered with uncertain light, and had only a few newer and well-made tables and chairs to offset the weathered and aged bar. There were about four people sitting inside, biker-looking types that sat hunkered over glasses of some dark, foamy looking beer, talking in low tones, or just content to sit in their own silence.

Behind the bar was a tall, lean black man with a gold hoop in his ear. His dark eyes flickered up to where she stood at the threshold, and he raised an eyebrow at her.

She quickly approached the bar and slid into the seat right in front of him.

“What’s your choice of poison, sweetheart?” The man said, his voice curving and warm, and she relaxed before she was overly conscious of the action.

“Something alcoholic, babe,” she said immediately, flashing him a smile, and the man smirked.

He held out his hand, and she took it, only for the man to press his middle finger against her pulse in a handshake she’d only ever heard about. Her heart staggering in her chest as she hesitantly returned the gesture, before pulling back and away.

“You really need to learn to disguise yourself better, darling,” he said, and Kelly couldn’t stop herself from looking down at her arms and wrists – she was covered.

“Not your scales, sweetie,” he said sympathetically. “You’ve got an aura. A presence around you, because you’re so damn strong. A Sea Snake, am I right?”

Kelly’s eyes flicked the others in the room. They didn’t even look at her.

“Calm down, they won’t notice us talking. I may not be strong, but I do have _some_ skills,” her fellow Magus – he couldn’t be anything but another Magus – said reassuringly, and held out his other hand.

Something flickered across his skin, showing small fins the color of bright silver for a brief moment, before they faded back away.

“So, pick your poison, darling,” the man said. “I’m Hanley. And who might you be?”

“Ciel,” Kelly said, and the name rolling off her tongue didn’t feel like a lie any longer. “I’m Ciel.”

“You look like a rum drinker. Something fruity?”

Kelly started, then laughed wryly. “You know your stuff,” she said. “I was going to go for something-”

“Harsh and rough? Nah, not with your drinks,” Hanley said, flashing her a pearly white, vaguely fanged grin. “Maybe in other…places, you’d like it that way, but you need some sweetness in your life, sugar.”

Kelly choked and cackled, all at once. “You dirty bastard,” she said, giggling. “Fuck, I _like_ you. Give me something good.”

The drink he set in front of her was a red, orange, and cherry-filled concoction that chinked with ice, and burned and bubbled pleasantly in her throat.

“So why’re you here?” he asked, once she’d taken a long, slow drink of it.

“Hm?”

“We don’t see a lot of Sea Snakes, especially not here in this half of the Grand Line, and especially not ones half as powerful as you,” Hanley said, polishing a few glasses sitting under the bar with a rag. “Hell, last Sea Snake I remember seeing was in, ah, Fishman Island when I was there with my folks seventy years ago, and he wasn’t even a Magus.”

“I’m heading the New World,” Kelly said slowly, eying the man sideways. “And seventy? You don’t look a day over thirty.”

Hanley laughed. “Ah, for Magi, aging’s a whole different kettle of fish. I’d look lot younger if I’d stayed with my tribe, and not stayed with my husband when I did.”

“Husband?” Kelly asked, her curiosity piqued. “Who’s the lucky bastard?”

“He’s a human Magus,” Hanley said. His eyes were carefully watching her, as though he was trying to look for something.

Kelly raised an eyebrow at him. “Issat supposed to mean something? Also, there are human Magi?”

Hanley blinked and then sighed. “Fuck, kid, have you been living your entire life under a rock? How old are you, anyway?”

“Er…technically about thirty-ish? I think?” Kelly said. “Is there something wrong with human Magi?”

Though, now that she thought about it, Nami might be a human Magi. Kelly had seen no markings to indicate she was anything but a slightly less than ordinary human woman.

How exactly did Magi get their powers, anyway? How were they passed down? She had thought that the only people who could inherit magic were non-humans. At least that had been what Gin and Kureha had led her to believe…

“While they’re considered above humans in any case, a lot of more traditional types among the Magi see them as lesser,” Hanley said, after handing another drink off to one of the other bar’s patrons.

Kelly’s skin prickled uneasily. “That doesn’t sound…right.”

“Magi have a lot of reasons to hate humans, and humans having our heritage pisses a lot of us off,” Hanley said softly. “There ain’t a Magus in the world as don’t have a few horror stories to tell about humans. You may be young, but it’s the same for you, ain’t it?”

Kelly’s throat went tight – _screaming pain, the roar of the crowd, the tang of blood in the air_ – and she looked down into her half-melted drink.

“You been alone for a long, long time,” Hanley said, and his voice was quiet. “You remind me of my husband, before he met those idiot followers of his.”

Swallowing the lump that had wedged in her throat with a long drink from the glass, she looked back up at him.

“Who’s your husband?” she asked, her voice strained, and thank the gods he didn’t comment on it.

“His name’s Montblanc Cricket,” Hanley said.

Kelly _stared_.

“M- _Montblanc_ _Cricket_?!” she spluttered.

Hanley put a hand on his hip.

“You got a problem with my husband?” he asked, sounding just shy of truly dangerous.

“What-no, no I don’t, it’s just…I didn’t expect him to be a Magus is all. The rumors about his family are less than kind, but that’s par for the course from humans. How did the two of you meet?” Kelly asked weakly.

Hanley’s eyes lost that dangerous glint, and he began to talk, replacing her drink with a full one as he did so.

* * *

“An altar?”

“Mhm, it’s important for all Magi who come this way to pay their respects,” Hanley said, leading the way through the forest on the opposite side of the island.

He had insisted the two of them go and visit this altar after the rest of his customers had left, and Kelly had gone with him. It wasn’t like she had anything better to do, now was it? Luffy and the others would have other things to do.

“Who’s it for?”

“You’ll see.”

The two of them wound around the base of a large tree, with roots that arched out of the ground several feet above Kelly’s head, and crested a small hill on the other side. Atop the incline, in a small clearing that gleamed with light, was a tiny altar.

Spells danced through the air, protections for pilgrims against the wild animals that roamed the forest, signs for safety and healing and others, thousands of them, far too many for Kelly to name. But the feeling of peace and serenity was unmistakable, and the subtle tension that had threaded her shoulders for the past several days vanished.

“This is the shrine of Montblanc Nephele, child of the goddess of the high air, the youngest of the Four,” Hanley said.

Kelly walked with him up to the small wooden structure, and knelt before it. It was only about three feet tall, and two feet in width, shaped to resemble a partial trunk of a tree, with roots extending deep into the earth. It was hollowed out enough to allow two small jars to rest inside.

She knew without touching them that they were funeral jars.

“Montblanc Nephele and her beloved husband, Noland, rest within,” Hanley said, his voice reverent. “After Noland was executed and Nephele died, their daughters brought them back here, and kept the true legend of what they saw going through the ages, despite the ridicule it brought them. It continues until the present day.”

“Your husband?”

“Yeah.”

The two of them sat in quiet silence for several moments, before Hanley sighed and stood.

“My husband’ll be expecting me for lunch,” he said, tracing signs in the air. “You’re welcome to stay for as long as you want, but it’s considered respectful to leave some signs of protections here before you leave. A sign you’ve been here, like all the others.”

Kelly could see it now. The signs floating in the air were woven deep, worn grooves where hundreds of thousands of Magi before her had placed similar ones.

She sat in a peculiar sort of dreamy silence for a long while after Hanley disappeared from the clearing.

There was a singing in the air, a foamy quality to it that fuzzed at her ears and nose and mouth. She became vaguely aware of a woman sitting next to her.

“I was wondering when you’d get here,” the woman said, and Kelly looked at her.

She was a shorter woman than Kelly, with skin the color of sun aged bronze. Her hair was a deep brown veined with gold, and she wore robes of blue and white. There were smiles tucked in the corners of her wide mouth, and at the edges of her bright brown eyes.

“Montblanc Nephele, I presume?” Kelly asked. All she felt with a sense of deep curiosity and camaraderie in the presence of what had to be a ghost.

“Correct,” the woman – _Nephele_ – said, her smile deepening. “And you are Ciel.”

Kelly winced. While she had no compunction about telling others her fake name (names had power, after all), she didn’t feel it was right lying to the dead. The _Magi_ dead, nonetheless.

“Er, well…actually I’m Ke-”

“No, you are _Ciel_. You just have not realized that yet,” Nephele said, and a shiver curled down Kelly’s back.

“What’s that mean?”

“You’ll see.”

“That’s…ominous,” Kelly said, running her hands over her arms. Nephele laughed, the sound like wind in crystal chimes.

“It’s been a long, long time since I spoke with one of my kin. May I ask a favor of you, _baha’hae_?”

“A favor?”

“You travel with the pirates meeting with my descendant, don’t you? You intend to go to the _Amārā pūrvajō jamīna_?”

“The what?”

“The land that was sent into the sky, along with my friends. Calgara’s tribe. ‘The land of our ancestors’, he told us. It was the closest translation to the Common Tongue he could make.”

Kelly’s skin prickled. “So Skypiea’s real.”

“The great current sent the land into the sky, though I only realized this long after I was dead.” The ghost’s voice was bitter with regret. “And none of my children had the strength enough to see me. What little talent they had for communing with their ancestors was lost in the ridicule they suffered. If Aegle had not stayed, perhaps her children could have communed with me, but ah, I let her go, to Vaayu only knows what fate.”

“Aegle?”

“The daughter of my first husband, a true Magus. She was the only of my four daughters who came with me when I left her father, and she did not renounce me when I married Noland. My family would have cast me out, but I had the blood of Vaayu Saamraagyee to keep me from harm, however diluted it was, and her blessing.”

“Vaayu Saa-wait, who now?”

The look on her ethereal face was gentle. “Our goddesses, child. Our ancestors. The guardians of Magic itself. Vaayu _Saamraagyee_ , Aag _Saamraagyee_ , Jal _Saamraagyee_ , and Prthvee _Saamraagyee_. The Empresses of the Four Corners of the World.”

“And you’re descended from Vaayu?”

“Just like you are descended from Jal.”

The world slowed for a moment.

“I’m not descended from a _goddess_ ,” Kelly said immediately, chuckling a bit at the very idea.

Nephele simply shook her head. “You are every bit as stubborn as my Aegle.”

“What happened to her?”

“She decided to stay, to become the Magus of the Shandians. It was her Calling, she told me, and I could not deny her that, now could I? She stayed, and when we came back she was gone, along with the others. And it took me so long to realize where she had gone.”

There were tears in her eyes, tears that were wiped away.

“You intend to go there, and I must ask a favor of you, _baha’hae_ ,” Nephele said.

 _(Mistress, the pirates are worried about you,)_ Gin said, and Kelly started at the sound of his voice.

_Gin, I’m busy._

_(The monkey is being less than patient about it. I think he’s close to believing you’ve run off, though Hanley is trying to convince them otherwise. I would not be surprised if he comes looking for you.)_

The thought of Luffy intruding on this peaceful place made her insides curdle.

“Look, Nephele, I have to go,” she said. “What favor do you need?”

The woman waved her hands in front of the shrine, and two things fizzled into view. A necklace, with a dark chain and a kairoseki pendant with strange symbols etched into it, and a set of two small battle fans, these made from some strange metal that felt as light as air, but strong than steel at the same time.

“Take these to the son of Calgara, and to Aegle’s daughter. And let him, the one with Calgara’s blood, know this.”

She spoke words of grief and grieving, of hope and friendship. They seemed to hang in the air for a long time after she spoke them, and hung there still, even as she vanished from sight, her spirit exhausted by the conversation.

Kelly stood, and made to leave, but stopped, remembering Hanley’s words.

She traced signs in the air – clumsy with it, her fingers feeling fat and thick – and left not signs of protection, but signs for family and welcome, of friendship and good will.

Then she left the clearing, her heart full, the strange weapons and necklace tucked safe away in her bag.

* * *

“CIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEL!”

“Oh fu-” Kelly managed to get out before Luffy slammed into her like a freight train, plowing her directly into the sandy beach. Hanley’s cackling bellowed out across the water, along with the laughter of the Straw Hats, and an unfamiliar voice.

“Ciel, where were you?” Luffy demanded, his arms like rubbery vices around her body.

“Are you at all familiar with the words ‘personal space’?” Kelly asked instead, once she’d gotten back her voice. “Why do you smell like blood?”

And he did – like blood and wounds far too recent to have come from Arabasta. She could see some cuts on his face, and rapidly disappearing bruises.

He shrugged. “Some stupid people,” he said sagely, and then squeezed her even harder, making her eyes cross. “Where were you, Ciel? You know you’re not allowed to leave us!”

Warmth curled in her belly, but she shoved it away.

“Get off me, you clingy bastard,” she snapped. “I was paying my respects.”

“Let the kid up, monkey-boy,” Hanley said, coming over and wrapped an arm around Luffy.

But the rubbery dumbass refused to let go of Kelly when Hanley picked him up, so Kelly was dragged upright as well. She wiggled in annoyance, making snarling noises as she did so.

“Monkey-boy, I’d suggest letting him go,” Hanley said in amusement.

“Not until he tells me where he vanished to,” Luffy said stubbornly.

“He was paying his respects to a shrine in the forest, brat,” Kelly’s fellow Magus said with a longsuffering sigh. “I was with him the entire time, he had no intention of leaving.”

Luffy gave Kelly a beady-eyed stare.

The Magus rolled her eyes. “He’s right,” she said gruffly. “Now, _will you get off me_?”

Luffy chortled, and released his grip, though he did keep a hold of Kelly’s arm. He quickly pulled her over to the rather odd looking house, and shoved her down beside the dozing swordsman who rested beside the open door.

“Watch him, Zoro! Don’t let him wander off.”

Zoro cracked open a single eye and grunted in affirmation. Kelly sat there for a few seconds in a confused bad humor, before sighing and sitting back against the wall, as she Shere leapt into her lap.

“You people are all fucking nuts,” she said, and Zoro snorted.

She felt someone watching her, and looked over to see Montblanc Cricket – weird ass haircut and all – sitting on a small stump, Gin curled up on his lap without a care in the world. She glared at him.

Why did people keep fucking _staring_ at her? That sort of shit gave her hives.

He smirked, and flicked his fingers out in a gesture that was as familiar as the handshake Hanley had given her when they had met in the bar.

No way.

No way, no way, oh gods there was no fucking way-

She concentrated, and felt her power flow out. The magic in the air stirred, and she felt power respond in Hanley, a quiet song, in Nami, a muted flow, and – there it was in Cricket, a thin trickle.

 _I keep running into Magi in the weirdest of places,_ she thought in blank shock, and then smiled somewhat shyly at him.

“The food’s ready!” Sanji, emerging from within the house between Masira and – Shojo, was it? – called out. Luffy latched another hand on Kelly’s wrist and dragged her back inside, the Magus growling all the way.

* * *

Hanley had decided to go with the groups heading into the forest, partially to help them, but also to steer the more clumsy Straw Hats well away from Nephele’s shrine. Kelly, on the other hand, stayed with Cricket and the Monkey Brothers.

Mostly because she wanted something of a break from the Straw Hats, but also because she knew that dumbass Bellamy would be here soon. She didn’t know if Cricket would be able to fight back against the user of the Bane Bane no Mi, as he was now a Magus, but she didn’t want to chance it.

(And there was a part of her, not as deeply hidden as she would like, that wanted _blood_.)

There was an immense cracking noise, and the ship tilted, knocked by some great force.

Kelly smiled, realizing what that meant, opening the door and walking down to-

Where had the rest of the ship gone?

She stared out at the open ocean, and realized a huge part of the Merry had simply _fallen_ _away_. That was Bellamy’s work, no doubt, and Kelly winced, thinking about how badly Usopp would react to that-

There was a yell, and a female voice saying “That’s our Bellamy!”

Right, she needed to deal with the present threat to the ship, and to her brother Magus. She dropped into Soru, and winked out of sight, landing in the shadows behind the house to see what was happening, Gin and Shere right beside her.

There the moron was, laughing, while his first mate – what was that idiot’s name? – put a foot on Cricket’s back, smirking and taunting the Magus.

“Now,” Bellamy said. “Clean up the trash.”

Fury. Fury roared like a forest fire through her, unstoppable and endless in its rage.

_How dare you._

“Protect the monkeys,” Kelly said to her Familiars, maintaining the last shreds of control over her temper for only long enough to enforce the order, before she let the reins slip from her grasp.

She _moved_.

Bone crunched, broke, shattered-

The blue haired man screamed, a sound so broken by pain and fear it no longer sounded human-

Twin roars of fury, the sound of more crunching bones, shrieks of terror as Shere and Gin exploded from the shadows like avenging wraiths, felling the pirates who were unlucky enough to be near the bleeding and bruised Masira and Shojo.

Kelly wrenched the blue haired man’s weapons out of his hands, then tossed them aside. She grabbed the man’s arm and pulled it back, feeling the bone bend, bend, _bend_ -and then _break_ in a way that was far too satisfying.

She kicked him in the spine, feeling it crack beneath her boot, and knocked him headfirst into the woman who had praised Bellamy.

“Wow, this is _fun_!” Kelly said, laughing as she buffed her claws on her sweatshirt.

“Who the fuck are you?!” The blue haired moron snarled, his voice trembling with pain.

She looked over at him, and _smiled_ , her mouth glinting with teeth, and she casually stripped off her jacket. Her scales glittered in the moonlight, blazing with power and light, and she rolled her neck.

Who knew the sound of her spine popping could be quite so _menacing_?

“I’m the person who’s going to kill you, little boys,” she said all too cheerfully.

They had touched a Magus. They had touched another Magus. They had dared to harm another Magus, in front of her.

Cricket was bleeding because these fools were greedy for gold. Humans. Humans were always the same, greed and a sense that everything belonged to them, that they had a right to take whatever they wanted-

For a second she was somewhere else, on another island, while another Magus screamed in pain and fear behind her, but she couldn’t do anything – _Sara, I’m sorry!_ – and a red haze filmed over her vision.

“Spring Hop- _urgh_!”

There was red over everything, but she could see enough to know that she had grabbed Bellamy, snaking her own Magic inside him, instantly negating the effects of his Devil Fruit.

She saw her hands come up, dig gouges into his chest, wrap blue-veined fists around his neck. She saw him go flying. She saw herself following. She saw herself stamping down on his bones and breaking them. She saw her fangs sinking into the blue haired man’s neck when he tried to stop her.

She heard the scream and the sounds, but distantly.

Crunch, crunch, crunch.

Snap, snap, snap.

And they were content.

Then a voice reached them.

**You should stop.**

_Why should I stop? He deserves it._

**Do not shed his blood here. Not on this land. Listen to me, Ciel. _Stop this._**

There was an arm wrapped around her waist. There was Magic twining with her own, as clear as the sun on the ocean, and just as pure. Hanley, she realized.

Hanley, her brother Magus, wanted her to stop.

She could do that.

She would do that.

It felt as though her eyes were opening, though she could tell they were already open. The haze was slowly slipping away, replaced by colors other than red. The sandy dirt of the beach. The blue of the ocean. The brown-white of the building and Merry. The grey faces of Bellamy’s crew.

The red of the blood staining the ground.

Hanley’s arm was still around her as she allowed him to pull her back.

The mako shark fishman cradled her against his chest like a dog’s owner might cradle their wounded and snarling animal – with gentleness, but also an arm of cautious iron.

“I’d suggest you leave,” Hanley said, his voice caught by the winds and snapping across the dead silent beach. “Take your dead and get lost, or I’ll let him finish the job.”

Kelly felt as though her senses were muffled by Hanley’s magic, and barely heard what the pirates said to that, though they left in short order, carrying a half dead Bellamy and an already dead Sarquiss – ah, _that_ was the man’s name – along with them.

So she did have venom, she thought dully, looking at the purple face of the dead man as he was carried away.

Neat.

There was a tense silence for a few seconds more, before Hanley sagged, dropping his head onto Kelly’s head with a groan.

“Jal help me, you are _terrifying_ , kid, you know that?” His muffled voice said. “Let’s go tend to my husband and his dumbass sons.”

She let the man drag her over to the three, and allowed her Magic to trickle into his, helping Hanley heal the others.

“I told you to learn some damn combat Magic,” Hanley snapped, brushing his dark fingers over Cricket’s pale chest. “But nooooo, you just have to do things your own way, don’t you? Dumb fuck-”

“You know I don’t have talent for that shit, Han,” Cricket snapped right back. “And those two idiots need healing more than I do.”

“Oh, I’ll make damn sure to give them all the healing they need after I deal with you,” Hanley grumbled, before shooting Masira and Shojo a look so fierce that both of the monkey-men sat back down real fast.

Kelly giggled, the sound foreign and strange in her throat as Gin and Shere rested on either side of her.

Hanley and Cricket both looked at her for a moment, before they exchanged a look Kelly couldn’t have deciphered, even if she didn’t feel quite so weird.

Then Hanley turned to Gin.

“Get your Master into the water, let them wash up and wash out, yeah? I’ve got some clothes they can wear when they’re done, and after I finish tending to these idiots.”

“But I dun need a bath,” Kelly protested, feeling somewhat dizzy.

Hanley rolled his eyes. “You’re a damn _Sea Snake_ , kid, you need the _water_. Also, you’re covered in gore.”

Kelly looked down at her claws and clothes, and saw that they were indeed covered in blood and bones and squishy bits.

“Shit, wouldja look at that,” Kelly said, swaying a bit, and Gin – now human and lanky and far too amused - tugged her over and behind the privacy of the house to undress.

* * *

Kelly sat on the railing of the promenade deck as the ship was towed out to sea by Masira’s and Shojo’s ships. The dulled effect of her fellow Magus’s magic had faded away a bit, and she felt-

Well, she didn’t know quite what she felt, and that was a problem.

She didn’t regret trying to kill Bellamy, though a small part of her wondered how that would affect the story. She hadn’t killed him, so it wouldn’t have been quite as bad.

But it. She had-

It had been so _easy_.

She had wanted to kill him.

Why hadn’t she?

Kelly shook her head, and looked up as Shojo’s voice rang through the air, and the voices of the men sounded out with the location of the current. The waves rolled, and Magic reached out and clamped around her spine.

She slid off the railing, and sat with a thump on the deck, just as the ocean began to roll and churn below them. The sky was dark, and water sprayed her face.

 _Gin, Shere, come here now,_ she ordered, and leapt to the lower deck, landing beside Zoro.

Her Familiars darted to her, away from Chopper, and she scooped them up, depositing Shere in the front pocket of Hanley’s jacket, while she tucked Gin behind her, almost in her hood.

“Finally wake up enough to join us?” the green-haired swordsman snarked, and she leveled him with a less than amused look.

“Talk about the pot calling the kettle black, Roronoa,” she said. “How long do _your_ naps take, hm?”

He nudged her and smirked, and she smirked back.

Then the realization came to her as Zoro went to look at the whirlpool they were heading into.

He was teasing her. He was playing with her, joking around with her, having fun-

Like a friend might.

But they were falling into the whirlpool before she could really begin to understand what she felt about that, and then the whirlpool was gone. The Straw Hats voiced their confusion, looking around as they tried to find where the whirlpool had gone.

“No, it’s already started,” Nami said, her voice trance-like, and not for the first time Kelly had to just _marvel_ at how attuned the girl was to the ocean.

Then there was a voice calling out across the sea, and every nerve in Kelly’s body went on full alert, full raging _focus_. Whatever calm Hanley had left with her was long gone in the wake of that gravelly voice.

And in the distance, she saw, emblazoned on a billowing mast of black cloth, a three headed skull and crossbones Jolly Roger, flying with menacing proudness over a ship crafted of immense logs.

Her breath came short to her lungs as Edward Teach bellowed “STRAW HAT LUFFY!”

Blackbeard.

The one who handed Ace over to the World Government and the Marines.

It would be so easy. It would be so easy, so _simple_ for her to reach out, to make the sea pull that bastard and the entirety of his crew to their deaths. It would be so easy.

But-

 _Should I interfere,_ she wondered. _I know what he will be capable of, I know that he is a threat, but he is a threat that I am_ aware _of. If I kill him, what other threat will rise to take his place?_

_Would he or she be even worse?_

But then she blinked as Teach’s voice filtered in once more.

“Your head’s got a 100 million beri bounty on it!” The traitorous scumbag boomed out, sounding cheerful and affable as all hell. “And Storm Bringer Nami! You’re worth 59 million!”

…

…

…

…

… _what_.

“I HAVE A BOUNTY?????” Nami shrieked, her legs going out from under her.

Luffy was crowing with joy, leaping down from his seat to swing a borderline catatonic and foaming-at-the-mouth Nami into his arms, cheering.

Kelly hurried up to Usopp, who was looking with binoculars over to the other ship.

“Yo, Usopp, let me see,” she said, and the boy handed over the binoculars.

And on the right was Luffy’s WANTED poster, looking the same as it had ever been, with Luffy smiling stupidly at whoever had taken the picture, and the number 100,000,000 below his name and epithet.

But in Teach’s left hand was not the WANTED poster of Zoro that Kelly had expected to find.

Instead, there was _Nami_ , her eyes blazing with rage and power, her staff sparking with the remnants of whatever attack she had just used, blood streaking her face and arms. One of the wrecked streets of Arabasta during the war along with a sky gone dark with storms was her backdrop, making for a thoroughly terrifying (and badass!) picture.

And if Kelly concentrated, she could see the fallen form of a dark-skinned figure lying almost out of frame, surrounded by rubble.

She handed back the binoculars as Sanji demanded to know where his WANTED poster was.

The Magus had forgotten that Nami hadn’t fought Miss Doublefinger, like she had done in the canon series.

No, she’d fought _Daz Bones_ , the strongest of all the ranked Officer Agents, the assassin of West Blue that had been known to the World Government. She’d fought the man only a step under Crocodile in terms of the Baroque Works’ hierarchy.

It was no friggin _wonder_ she had a bounty.

(Though why was it only 59 million, and not 60 million, like Zoro had? … _Sexist bastards_.)

“Jesus H. Christ,” Kelly said with a laugh. “Damn, Nami, I’m impressed!”

Nami snapped out of her catatonia long enough to come over and whack Kelly upside the head.

“You don’t get to enjoy this, jackass! Ugh, I can’t believe this-”

“PAY ATTENTION!” Shojo shouted.

Kelly’s attention snapped back to the sea, which had begun churn alarmingly.

 _Hold on_ , she told her Familiars. Gin’s claws dug into the skin of her neck, and she pulled her hood up and over him, to anchor him a bit more. Shere buried deeper into the pocket, and curled up tight.

Kelly darted to the lower part of the deck, and stood by the door to the kitchen. She braced her foot on the wall, and anchored herself with magic as the ocean began to rise. Magic bubbled and twisted, ancient and powerful and overwhelming in its intensity, and Kelly shook with the force of it.

She had wondered several times how such a thing could be so powerful to take an entire chunk of an island into the sky (barring anime physics - or lack thereof), but she _felt_ it now. _Felt_ what was coming, the magic and ancient strength awakening as some unknowable force called it up.

The air was still, quivering, like a rubber band stretched much too thin.

Then-

**_BOOM!_ **

The water exploded, curving straight up into an impossible column of wind and sea currents, soaring into the sky without thought for physics or the mundane laws of man. G-forces smashed into Kelly’s body like a particularly unforgiving giant’s hand, and her Magic snapped out instinctively, shielding her.

She breathed through the sudden shock of it, hearing Teach’s distant yells as he fell back into the hungry sea below.

The wind rushed past, and she found herself standing upright on the wall.

She looked up, and gasped at what she saw.

The current was a pillar extending hundreds, maybe thousands of feet into the churning air above her head, piercing the dark sky like a ray of gleaming, iridescent blue light. The ship glided along the current, barely held in place by the straining keel that bounced rather alarmingly every so often.

“Holy _fuck_ ,” she whispered.

The Magic that roared through the air made her shiver.

Wood and debris rained down – victims of the stream, she thought with careless wonder, feeling a small amount of pity for the dead Sea King. But it didn’t matter to her, even as the Straw Hats panicked.

If Nami couldn’t keep them attached to the current, she could. And she wouldn’t even have to try very hard. The Magic of the pillar called to her like a siren’s song.

The trouble would be keeping herself from being consumed in turn.

“Unfurl the sails, right now!”

Nami’s voice, stern and commanding, made her smile. Good girl.

Under Nami’s direction, the ship began to move, to lift off the current.

But it wasn’t falling.

The keel lifted entirely out of the water, and born on the fearsome winds, began to fly alongside the current.

Kelly felt a laugh bubble in her throat.

“Skypiea,” she said, her voice lost in the roar of the wind. “Here we come.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **FOOTNOTES AND TRANSLATIONS**  
>  *Some changes, and some new things: When it comes to languages – the language of the Magi is a mix of Latin and Hindi (the first primarily used for spells, while the second is the language used by the ancient people/also used as a Common Tongue among Magi), the languages of Skypiea are Gujarati (the primary language of the Shandians) and the Common (human) Tongue. 
> 
>  
> 
>  **baha’hae** \- _Sermo_ ; closest translation can read something like "one who is both brother and sister".
> 
>  **Amārā pūrvajō jamīna** \- _Shandian Language_ ; means something along the lines of "the land of our ancestors". This is the true name of Calgara's homeland.
> 
>  **Saamraagyee** \- _Sermo_ ; means "Empress". Used exclusively for the goddesses of the Magi faith.


	26. summitate autem mundi (on top of the world)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Straw Hats reach Skypiea...but something is wrong.

* * *

The clouds hit like a brick wall.

Kelly closed her eyes, wrapping an arm around Shere and placed a hand on Gin to steady him. She hummed a little as the water washed over her skin. Water always felt so good, and this was just another form of the stuff that could be found down in the ocean proper.

The Straw Hats’ yells of terror were muffled by the clouds, but Kelly simply smiled and let the water stream over her, curving her Magic around Gin and Shere to spare them some of the indignity of being soaked.

The ship exploded through the cloud, the constructed wings shattering to splinters beneath the force, before falling back. Kelly snaked her magic out, cushioning the ship as it hit the clouds, the wood bouncing a little.

She was the only one on her feet, the rest of the Straw Hats sprawled out on the deck in puddles of water, gasping for air.

The air was a little thin here and it made her feel a little strange and weak at the knees. But that was no matter. She had gone to depths of the ocean that would have killed Sea Kings, thin air was no barrier.

Kelly curled her magic out, around her lungs, letting it pump through her blood and wrap around her bones, and felt for a moment as though she was in the depths of the sea, invincible, utterly untouchable.

_Glorious_.

Being a Magi was remarkably convenient, she thought with amusement, and went to help Nami stand upright.

Her fellow Magi sagged against her, and as unobtrusively as possible, Kelly reached out her magic. She felt Nami’s respond, reaching tendrils out through the younger Magi’s body, and soon Nami was able to stand on her own.

As the other Straw Hats began to regain their composure, Kelly looked around and shook her head.

“Physics, what physics,” she grumbled.

For miles upon miles around, there was nothing but a thick ‘sea’ of clouds, endless and somehow strong enough to hold up their ship. The sky above them was so blue as to almost hurt the eyes, though the sun’s heat didn’t seem too much closer. She could feel animals ‘swimming’ in the ‘ocean’ below her.

This was impossible. And yet, it was very much happening.

She rubbed the bridge of her nose, and went to go pluck Usopp off the side of the railing.

“Ciel, what’re you doing?”

“ _Idiot_ ,” she chided, flicking him on the forehead. “What if this sea doesn’t have a bottom? You’d go straight through the clouds.”

Usopp stared at her for a long moment, and then went dead white. Kelly raised an eyebrow in amusement.

“Ehhhhh, really?!” A pair of rubbery arms wrapped around her neck. Kelly staggered a bit as Luffy attached himself to her back. “How do you know that, Ciel?”

Kelly glared, trying to pry the rubbery idiot off her back. “Are you even a _little_ _bit_ aware of the concept of ‘personal space’?” she snarled, before finally giving it up. “And considering we got launched through the bottom of the clouds all of thirty minutes ago, I’d say I have some authority on the matter. We are still above the sky, if you remember.”

Usopp shivered.

“T-Thank you, Ciel,” he said, and Kelly waved it off.

“Just don’t be Luffy, please, and try to use some of that common sense I know you have,” she said, wincing as Luffy protested. “Don’t start with me, you dumbass monkey. You have less sense than a goddamn peahen, ow, ow, ow, _OW_ FUCK _OFF_ YOU MORON!”

She thrashed as Luffy pulled at her ears, his weight dragging them both back to the floor, where he drew her into an impromptu wrestling match.

Proved her point quite nicely, about him not having an _ounce_ of common sense.

As Zoro pulled them apart, she caught sight of Nico Robin, her hand covering her mouth as her eyes twinkled with laughter. Kelly glared at her, and Robin’s hands came up in a defensive gesture.

Kelly looked away. She did not want to think about Nico Robin smiling. She did not want to think of Nico Robin at all.

(Kelly had just snatched away Robin’s opportunity to appeal to the crew by saving Usopp, and she was shamed by the rush of petty amusement she got from that knowledge.)

“AAAAHHH, THE SHIP WAS DESTROYED!” Chopper’s sudden scream had her head snapping around in a hurry. So soon?

The reindeer was bouncing up and down on the deck, a pair of binoculars by his feet as he flailed. Beyond him, Kelly could see the cloud of smoke that was all that remained of the ship that the Shandian warrior – fuck, she couldn’t remember his name – had destroyed.

And there was the warrior now, rocketing along towards them across the clouds. Magic surged in Kelly’s veins.

Wiper – ah, _that_ was his name, she remembered it now – was a goddamn thing of beauty. He would have put any of the parkour artists she had seen back home to shame, moving like physics was merely a suggestion, instead of a law.

_Of course,_ she mused as Wiper kicked Luffy into the mast, _most of the One Piece world_ is _like that_.

Wiper darted towards her, and she bent her knees just a bit, getting ready to move.

He was good, yes, but not _nearly_ as good as her. She stepped to the left, letting the Shandian slide uselessly past. He turned on a dime, lunging for her again, and she stepped forward to meet him, her fangs showing in a vicious smile. Her fist slammed home, punching the air straight from the man’s lungs, and knocking him flying.

Wiper got his feet under him before he hit the clouds beyond the ship, and glared up at her as she rested her arms on the ship’s railing.

“I’m not impressed,” she teased him.

His only response was to leap into the air, and level the gun her carried at her. She raised an eyebrow at him, and then she felt the air shift.

Gan Fall’s lance crashed into Wiper’s shield, which the Shandian had gotten up just in the nick of time. The warrior went flying yet again, and Kelly stepped back so Gan Fall could land on the railing.

The man was leanly muscled, which suited a man who had to be well past his sixties far more than did the ridiculous eight (twelve?) packs that men like Rayleigh and Newgate sported. His cape was the same black and yellow she remembered from the show, his hair and beard still white, and his armor still archaic, but something was off.

Gan Fall’s face was terribly drawn and gaunt, far more than she remembered, and his armor-

Kelly stopped and stared. The man’s armor and his lance was speckled with old blood.

Old _Daemon_ blood.

She would know the smell anywhere, the faint odor of decaying things and sickly flowers. But why on earth did Gan Fall wear armor and carry a lance that had seen battle with _Daemons_?

“Impressive,” a voice interrupted her thoughts, and she looked over and down at the man. He nodded at her.

“I could return the sentiment,” she offered with a straight face. “Haven’t seen a man your age move that fast in a while.”

His eyes narrowed. “Is that supposed to mean something, youngster?”

She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing. “I mean, you don’t really expect to see a man of your advanced age doing those sorts of tricks, and _you_ are a beautiful creature,” she said, her attention turning completely away from the older man and to his companion.

Pierre was a weird ass looking bird, but she knew that it – he? – had eaten a devil fruit, so that was only to be expected. Still, his feathers were very soft, and he crooned pleasingly as she stroked her hands over his back.

Then she got another shock, breathing in the scent the pink and red-polka-dotted bird carried with him. More Daemon blood, and _Magi_ charms wrapped around his neck and tied into his reigns. Old Magi charms – the magic hadn’t been renewed in some time, but they were still powerful. Gan Fall carried similar ones, etched into his lance and armor.

What the blithering fuck was going on here?

She pressed her face into Pierre’s neck, humming a little as Gan Fall spoke with the others. Luffy, Zoro, and Sanji were still flat on their backs, panting for air.

“Why can’t…” Zoro seemed to have trouble finding air. “…my body…”

“It’s because of the thin air,” Kelly said, leaning back against the bird.

“He is right,” Robin said. “For those not accustomed to it, it takes a while to adjust to higher climes.”

“You must be Blue Sea Dwellers,” Gan Fall stated, sitting on the rail and looking over them all with a keen eye.

“Blue Sea Dwellers?”

“Those who live beneath the clouds,” Gan Fall said. “If you did travel from there, I am not surprised you feel so weak. This is the White Sea, which is 7,000 meters higher than you were last…though, your strength in particular is a surprise.” The last comment was aimed at Kelly, who shrugged.

Maybe she had little to fear from this man – if that had remained the same, and had not changed along with everything else – but she was not going to bare her scales for him to see. The ones on her neck were visible enough, as she had forgone the covering suit she had worn for close to a decade under her other clothes.

She had not become that comfortable enough in her own skin.

“I’m just stronger,” she said casually, and Sanji made a noise like a (rather tired) teapot boiling over.

Pierre nuzzled her hair as Gan Fall watched her. His eyes were as keen as Kureha’s had been, back on Drum, and it nearly made her bristle. Then he turned away, and kept talking to the Straw Hats. At least that was the same – extols, his shock over their having ridden the Stream, and his giving a whistle to summon him as a present.

He also looked suitably badass as he turned to leave.

“I am the Knight of the Sky, Gan Fall,” he intoned, and then looked at Kelly. “Peace be with you, and may the goddesses give you strength in these times.”

The words were ominous, like a prophecy, and Kelly shivered despite herself as Pierre moved to his master’s side. And then they were off, leaping into the sky in a frankly comical display of less than elegant polka-dotted Pegasus and elderly knight.

Kelly muffled a burst of laughter into her arm as the Straw Hats gaped at the display.

After a while, they got the ship moving, this time to the strange waterfall in the distance.

Luffy, Usopp, and Chopper had a great deal of fun bouncing on the clouds that hid the path to the waterfall. They only came back when they brought word of two paths towards the waterfall – one through a strange gate on the right, and the left path, one that took a longer way around.

As they sailed through the clouds, something prickled over Kelly’s skin, and she hurried to the front of the ship. Everything looked fine – beyond the strange look of the enormous, semi-solid clouds towering around them – but Kelly knew better than to trust in her sight alone.

The strange feeling lingered in the air.

_Gin?_

_(I feel it too, Mistress.)_

Shere buried deeper into Kelly’s arms. _:My fur itches:_ the tiger complained.

“Nami, get us moving to the left!” Kelly ordered, and the navigator looked at her in confusion.

“Ciel, wha-”

“Just get us moving to the left, that’s the path we need to take! _Move, god damn it!_ ” she thundered, her panic slowly beginning to rise and no one moved.

They could not take the path through the gate. She did not know how she knew this, or why it was so insistent, but they _could not_ take that path.

“Ciel, what are you talking about?” Nami said, sounding concerned. “Why shouldn’t-”

Kelly whirled on her. “Did you not hear me?! I said get this ship to the left path, **_right fucking now!_** ”

Magic infused into her voice, and the result was instantaneous. Nami’s shoulders snapped straight, and she began barking orders at the others. Where Kelly had failed, Nami did not – the men began to hurry around the ship as she directed, and the ship itself began turning in the direction of the left path.

Kelly remained where she was, her hands gripping the rail so hard splinters dug into her palms, but she ignored them. It was only when the ship glided onto the cloud-path that led to the waterfall, far away from the gate, that the feeling eased.

Not entirely, but enough.

“What did you sense?” Kelly’s head snapped to the side, where Nico Robin stood, leaning against the opposite rail. The woman had been smart enough to remain a fair distance away, but her eyes were focused on Kelly’s face.

“I…don’t know,” Kelly said, turning away, and releasing her grip on the railing. Blood from her palms stained the fractured wood, and she cursed, wiping it away with her sleeve.

She knew better than to let her blood lie around where anyone could get at it.

“You don’t know?” There was nothing condescending in the woman’s voice, only something like curiosity.

“Something bad,” Kelly allowed, and turned away. “Something very bad.”

She tugged her sleeves down and pulled her collar up, turning away from the woman as they approached the immense spiral leading into the sky.

“How are we supposed to get up there?” Nami asked, coming to stand beside her.

Kelly spared a look for her sister Magus, before casting her magic out into the strange water around them. Nami shivered a bit, rubbing her hands over her arms.

“I’m seeing if I can get us a ride,” Kelly said, concentrating.

Then she grinned as her query was answered.

Enormous - yet surprisingly gentle – claws exploded from the water, clamping onto Merry’s broken wings. They were red and green spotted, belonging to an over-large shrimp that size of a school bus. An order from Kelly had the shrimp zooming towards the heavens, keeping a fair distance away from the sight of anyone (or anything) that might have been lurking at the gates below.

The ship zoomed along at a speed that came fairly close to the one they’d reached while traversing the Reverse Mountain, the wind blowing her hood back and whipping at her hair. The sun’s light was absolute brilliance, blinding her, and Kelly threw up a hand to protect her eyes.

As they landed, the shrimp bidding Kelly a fond farewell in its own way, she could have sworn she smelled the stench of dead things, of rotten flowers-

But then it was gone, and Kelly was staring out over a vista of heavenly beauty. Domed buildings and pointed towers spiraled into the sky, perched on suspiciously sturdy looking clouds. Twirling vines greater than skyscrapers that formed the ‘roads’ of this place vanished beyond even Kelly’s range of sight, their destinations hidden by the clouds.

But closer to them still was a smaller island, one populated with lush trees and swaying palms. There was a cool, refreshing breeze on the air to take the bite away from the sun’s heat, and a faint, musical sound carried to them on that selfsame breeze, like flutes.

Kelly breathed in, and the uneasy feeling returned. There was something wrong here, but she had no idea what.

_Why had Gan Fall had old Daemon blood on his armor?_

The question tugged at her bowels like a particularly bad piece of meat. Why _had_ the Knight of the Sky been fighting Daemons? Were there Daemons here? They couldn’t be strong ones, if a human – albeit a human with Magi charms – was able to fight them and survive.

“CIEEEEEEEEEEEL!” the whining yell dragged her out of her thoughts, and she scowled at Luffy, who was perched in a tree on the shore. “COME HEREEEEEEEEEEE.”

Then there was a stretchy hand attached to her jacket front, and Kelly was cursing the little idiot with every foul word she knew as she was hurtling through the air, to crash headfirst into Luffy’s chest.

“What the FUCK was that for, you fucking JACKASS?” she snarled, not even bothering to try and escape his vice-like hug. She knew better now.

“Ciel, open this,” he demanded, shoving a fruit in her direction. “It’s hard, and I’m _hungry_.”

Her glare upped three levels. Luffy was absolutely unmoved.

“You dragged me over so that I could open your food for you.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yep!”

“You are the biggest fucking idiot I’ve ever met in my entire life. Fine, let me go and I’ll try,” she said.

Luffy released her arms, but kept his grip tight around her waist, resting his head against her back. They must have made a ridiculous picture, Kelly thought, trying not to think about how warm he felt against her scars.

She did know how to open these things, and quickly went to work. Her claws served her well as a knife to cut open the bottom, and she peered inside. It smelled sweet and tangy, like orange juice.

_Orange_ juice? She shrugged, and held the fruit up to her mouth. It spilled out over her cheeks as she drank, ignoring Luffy’s protests of “NOOOOO, _MY_ FRUIT GREEDY-CIEL!”

She passed it over and wiped at her cheeks. “It’s good,” she told him, and he let her go entirely to clutch the fruit to his chest, glaring at her. She leapt down from the tree and helped Usopp with his own fruit, laughing as he rhapsodized over the taste.

The day went on, the Straw Hats and Kelly lazing around, the more boisterous members of the crew roughhousing and playing. Zoro pulled Kelly into a friendly spar, Kelly barely just hiding the fact she was pulling her punches so as not to break the green haired man.

It was only when Sanji was calling them all in for dinner when Kelly realized something was wrong.

Where was Conis?

The Magus stopped and looked back at the beach. The girl hadn’t appeared once through the day, though Kelly knew full and well she should have. Could she not have appeared because they hadn’t gone through the gate, and because that old hag who watched them hadn’t known?

But that was irrelevant, as Enel had _Kenbunshoku Haki_. He would know they were there even if the woman hadn’t told him. So why hadn’t Conis come, to start the trap for the Blue Sea Dwellers as she had done in canon? Did Enel have other plans for them, since they’d taken another path? But even that had led to the same place as in canon.

The sight of the Magi charms on Gan Fall’s lance came back to her – signs for strength, for accuracy, for death itself – and she bit her lip.

No sign of Conis or her father.

No sign of _anyone_.

What the hell did it mean?

“Ciel, _fooooooood_!”

“Keep your shorts on,” Kelly snapped at the open doorway, and turned away from the beach to join the pirates.

* * *

There was a light in the kitchen as Kelly plodded sleepily past the door, heading for the crow’s nest for her watch. She stopped, and peered inside.

Sanji was bent over the counter, his fingers gripping the counter. His back was a tight line of tension, and he was…Kelly stopped dead, her fatigue fading away, and she stared. Was he _trembling_?

What the _fuck_?

She pushed open the door, letting it close silently behind her. Sanji wasn’t just trembling. She could smell _tears_ , the taste of salt on her tongue curdling her belly.

“Blondie?” she asked, her voice quiet and worried.

Sanji snapped around, and when she saw the red eyes and tears tracking down his face, her heart ached.

“ _What_?” His voice was ragged too, hoarse and painful, like he’d been crying for a while.

“Didn’t expect to see you up this late,” she said, her voice neutral.

“Leave me alone, you shitty scoundrel,” he said, but his voice broke halfway through the sentence. He rubbed his hands over his face as his breath hitched.

“Le-leave me…” the words couldn’t even come out before his mouth clamped shut, his teeth grinding.

Kelly walked over to him, and took his hands in hers, drawing them away from his reddened and swollen eyes.

“Sanji, what’s wrong?” she asked, stroking her thumbs over his wrists.

“Why the fuck do y- _you_ care?” he got out.

_Because you’re in pain and it feels like a knife in my heart_ , Kelly didn’t say. Instead, she shrugged.

“Because I can? Not _entirely_ an unfeeling monster here,” she said wryly, and Sanji let out a watery snort.

“Shove off, bastard,” he said. There was a very well hidden tinge of fondness to the words, and Kelly grinned.

“Better,” she chided, and guided him over to the table. “Now, _sit_. Where do you keep the tea?”

“I don’t need you to baby me,” Sanji protested, and Kelly nearly rolled her eyes.

“Christ, you’re as bad as Beth,” she muttered.

It only stung a little to think of her best friend back, who had rarely accepted help or care from anyone. It had been a bitch and half of sneaky sabotage to get the girl to submit to ‘babying’, even when she was severely ill. Alex had been better about getting her to listen to him, but Kelly was no slouch.

She hadn’t had practice in a while, was all. All it took was finding the right buttons to press.

“If you don’t tell me, I’ll just go crashing around your lovely kitchen and mess _everything_ up,” she threatened, and Sanji’s head shot up, his eyes shooting fire.

“You wouldn’t dare,” he began, and Kelly smirked at him.

“Try me, Blondie,” she teased.

His lips were twitching with barely concealed humor, and Kelly’s grin became a touch less mocking.

“The pantry, left wall, a box secured to the wall. They have labeled jars,” he said finally, and Kelly went to find them.

It smelled of food and dried spices in the dry, cool room, and the Magus took a moment to stand there, remembering how her father’s kitchen had smelled, the scent of the herbs he grew.

Then she went in search of the tea box, and found it where Sanji had said. She gingerly opened the lid, and saw several opaque jars. She picked one up, and peered at the writing on the label. It was the careful letters of a young boy, written in a childish hand.

And for a moment, she saw a man and a boy, as though the image was imprinted on the insides of her eyelids. The man – who had a remarkable mustache - was guiding the boy’s hand as he mixed powders, pouring the mixes into the jars, and watching carefully as the boy wrote the names on the jars.

Zeff and Sanji, she realized, and felt her heart turn over as she watched the two together.

_Sanji and his father_ , she thought, and the sheer sentimentality of it all made her want to turn to mush.

Instead, she continued searching, and found a jar labeled Chamomile. It would do, she thought, closed the lid, taking the jar with her back out of the pantry. Sanji was still sitting at the table, but now Gin was in his lap, and Shere was curled up on the table, letting Sanji rub his hands through her fur.

Sanji had a curiously soft look on his face, and Kelly’s heart really did sigh the sight, even as she felt another vision seeping before her eyes. Sanji, barely older than a toddler, cradling a turtle in his arms and carefully feeding it strips of lettuce.

_This boy is going to be the death of me_ , she thought with a sigh, and went to find the tools she would need to make the tea. She didn’t speak until she had two cups of steaming tea and set them on the table.

“Drink,” she ordered, and so he did.

There was silence for a time, before Sanji set the cup down.

“I dreamed about her, _it_ ,” he began, his voice ragged. “Th-the monster. The Daemon.”

Her fingers stilled, and she set down her still full cup. She had never really liked hot tea, after all.

“The Daemon?”

Sanji was trembling again. Gin clambered up to wrap himself around the cook’s neck, and Shere curled up in the space Gin had just vacated.

“In Arabasta, the one who-who attacked me,” Sanji said and shuddered.

Kelly went very, very cold, and she remembered that day, the laughter of the Daemon she had fought as he told her what his sister would do to Sanji-

But Ace had told her that he had been able to get to Sanji before the thing had managed to-to do what those things loved to do to helpless people.

_But Sanji had been injured_ , she thought, remembering what Ace had hinted at.

Ace had used a gift from a Magi to help heal Sanji quickly, was all he had said, and he’d refused to say anything else on the subject, distracting her quite thoroughly. And she’d hidden from the Straw Hats for the rest of their stay in the country, barely able to look any of them in the eye-

She knew what Daemons could do.

She knew what Daemons could wrought on a person’s mind.

While her nightmares nowadays mostly consisted of M- _Mina_ and those strange ones where she inhabited other bodies and minds, before she’d come to Aratuck they’d been of her time in the slave pens and in the castles of the Daemons.

“I dreamed,” Sanji took a long, shuddering breath. “I dreamed that Ace didn’t save me. That it…that it…”

He could not finish, and tears began to spill down his cheeks again.

“W-Why am I so _weak_ ,” he sobbed, and Kelly couldn’t breathe for the hurting grief in her chest. “Why am I so pathetic and-”

Kelly stood, and walked over to Sanji. Gin and Shere had leapt free the moment she had moved without her even having to say a word. They knew her very well, her Familiars.

Effortlessly, she pulled him up into her arms and sat back down.

“Wha-What are you doing?” Sanji squawked, flustered. “Damn it, Ciel, put me down-”

“I was twelve, when they first found me and brought me to their castles,” Kelly said, her voice flat. “I was fourteen when they caught me again, caught me because I was stupid and foolish. I still remember what they did, and I cried myself to sleep every day for a month, remembering what horrors they did to me. I have nightmares still. They are _monsters_ , Sanji. They are _bred_ to seek out fear, they are taught how to sow it in humans. It is part of what they feed on, like what fine wines and deserts are to the rest of us. You are _not_ pathetic for surviving in the face of something that has felled men far greater and stronger than you, and you are _not_ weak for being scarred by it.”

“But I keep crying, like a child-”

“Sanji, if that Daemon had left physical scars on your body, and they pained you still, would we be having this conversation?” Kelly asked. “Do you blame Nami for the aches that her scar gives her? For the wounds Luffy has gotten, and how they sometimes hurt him still? Any warrior who has fought comes away with wounds that perhaps may never heal right. You fought in battle, against a foe you could not defeat, a foe who knew precisely how to target your weakest spots, but you walked away, even with scars. _Living_ is not weakness, and accepting care from those who would protect you, even when you have thought yourself unworthy of it, is the strongest thing I have ever known.”

Sanji had gone still, and when she looked down at him, he was staring up at her like he’d never seen her before. The vision of Sanji feeding the turtle with carefully chopped strips of lettuce flashed before her eyes again, and she shook it away.

“I have Gin and Shere, Sanji,” she told him. “I never would have survived this past decade had I not. I would have slit my own throat if they hadn’t been there to take on some part of my burden. I could never have done it alone.”

There was silence for a time, but it never grew awkward. Then Sanji shifted in her arms.

“Will I always dream about it?” he asked her, his voice quiet and pained.

Kelly pressed her lips to Sanji’s head and sighed.

“Probably,” she said, her voice just as quiet.

* * *

_The warriors who had been out scouting came back, most all of them injured. But at least none were dead._

_Hansik was the worst hurt, his skin heavily burned from a lightning blast he’d nearly been caught in. He told us that the priests had been out through the forest, and that they’d been trying to kill a Blue Sea Dweller before Enel killed him._

_She tended to Hansik first, as best she could. He would live and breathe normally, but he would bear the looping scars around his torso for the rest of his life._

_At least he hadn’t gone into the forest. Only the priests of Enel could walk there without being hunted by what lived within, and only they and their master were guaranteed life if they did so._

_As the she finished with the remainders of the wounded scouts and warriors, she looked around. Wiper had gone out as well, but he had not yet returned. Panic fizzled down her spine._

_He would return, she told herself, brushing her long hair out of her eyes. He was the strongest and fastest warrior in the tribe, and the charms she had etched into his shield and gun were some of the longest-lasting and most powerful she knew._

_Then, she saw a form staggering over the boundary to their camp, and hurried to meet him._

_It was Wiper, looking annoyed and badly bruised. She didn’t bother offering to help him, and instead slid under the arm that wasn’t holding his shield, mask, and board._

_Instead of taking him back to the tents, she found a shadowy corner to escort him to, and made him sit. She knelt before him, her hands glowing with power, and began to heal the worst of his bruises._

_“You should be healing the others,” Wiper chastised her, and she scowled at him._

_“I already did, for your information.”_

_“Hmph.”_

_“So?” she asked, after healing his cracked ribs. “What news?”_

_“More Blue Sea Dwellers,” Wiper said._

_“Idiots,” she said, disgusted. “You would think by now they would realize that to come here means death, not treasure.”_

_“They have a Snake among them,” Wiper said, and she froze, her eyes snapping up to his._

_“You’re certain?”_

_He glared at her, and she fought the urge to smile._

_“Were they the one who cracked your ribs?”_

_The glare intensified, and she fought the urge to giggle._

_“Well, in any case, perhaps Enel will be busy with them and not send raids out for a time. Perhaps he’ll even spare the mainlanders from the Lottery,” she said, and Wiper snorted._

_“He can send all of those land stealers to their deaths, as far as I care,” Wiper scoffed._

_She did not reply. This was not an argument she was keen on rehashing again._

_“I should get back,” she said instead, and stood to leave._

_“Wait.” Wiper’s voice was quiet, and she looked back at him. Like always, it was impossible for her to read the emotions on his face, even though she'd grown up with him._

_“Don’t try to go after the Snake. It’s too dangerous,” he warned, and she bristled._

_“I’m not an idiot, despite what you may think,” she snapped, and walked away, her hands curling into fists._

_No matter the years she had spent fighting to protect the tribe, no matter how many years she’d spent battling Daemons, he would forever see her as the idiot mainlander child still clinging to her mother’s dress._

_She rubbed her stinging eyes, tied her blonde hair back into an efficient braid, and went back to her duties._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My interest in One Piece has been flagging a fair bit these past months. So to reignite my interest, I am doing the next 50,000 words of this story for the National Novel Writing Month! 
> 
> This will be the last chapter I get out before I double down on writing, but by mid-December I should have at least 7 brand new chapters ready to send out into the world!


	27. Shadows in the Forest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kelly decides to explore Skypiea, with terrifying (and painful) results.

* * *

**DATE:** _Saturday, 853 World_

( _Robin saw me struggling with the date and told me about the calendar accepted by most of the world at large. Pirates don’t keep track of such things beyond day-today and week-to-week, and kingdoms not affiliated with the World Government have their own ways of keeping track of the time. It was fucking fascinating, and-no, no, no shit what am I_ doing)

 **MY LOCATION:** _My room on the Merry Go_

 **PLACE:** _Skypiea_

_So, what I remember from the canon events is this: After the Straw Hats arrive on Skypiea’s Angel Beach, they horse around for a while, and then Conis appears. There’s the little bit with Conis opening the fruit for Luffy (I played the part in the here and now), and then Pagaya and the waver._

_Luffy fails at it, Nami excels, and she finds herself near the…what was it called? The place where Enel’s priests were…ah, it’s no matter._

_I also remember those white beret weirdos – that hasn’t happened either, and it_ should _have happened on the first day._

_And there was still that strange feeling in the air, one of very quiet menace._

_The Shandians, perhaps? They have exactly zero reason to like any outsider – be they of the Blue Sea or the White Sea – and it wouldn’t be farfetched to assume they would be watching us, especially after Wiper didn’t even come close to beating me._

_But, no._

_It’s not human._

_Could there be Daemon nests on this island? Fuck, I wanna say no, because it’s fucking Skypiea and Enel will be a pain in the ass enough on his own, but, I just don’t, I don’t know. And that shit pisses me off._

_I’ll need to go out exploring today, after breakfast. Because whatever’s out there is hidden, and hidden well. So exploring into the jungle, and maybe Conis’s house if I can find it, without letting the others get wind of this. I can take a lot of damage if there are some nasty surprises, but the others? Christ, I never thought I would say this, especially of fucking_ Monkey D. Luffy _, but they’re…_

 _They’re_ weaker _than me. Zoro makes somewhat up for it in sheer talent and knowledge, but I am stronger, a helluva lot more durable, and leagues faster than all of them._

 _It’s fucking disturbing, you know? I spent a huge portion of my childhood admiring these people who performed feats so far out of any human’s reach, and wanting to be them, and know-_ thinking _I could never, because how could any normal human ever do the things the Straw Hats and the other characters did?_

 _And now I’m here, and I_ know _I could kill them. I know I could kill any of them as easily as breathing, and that’s…_

_I don’t know how I feel about that, to be quite honest._

_Even in a few years, I could crush them like bugs with sheer physical strength alone, and that’s before you even take my Magic into the equation. I feel monstrous in my own skin, and this strength – it’s unreal, it’s not what I_ ever _wanted, god!_

 _I was fat and flabby and useless back home, I was ugly as shit with barely any muscles and I would prefer that to_ this _. I look at myself in the mirror and I know no one I’ve met so far can stop me, and what if I’m not good enough of a person to want to stop on my own?_

_GAH. FUCKING CHRIST._

[incoherent, angry scribbling follows, smeared and illegible]

_This is so fucking stupid and useless, for fuck’s sake. Why do I keep picking at this nonsense like I would at a scab? There’s no point. I know I’m a monster, so fuck worrying about it._

_I’m not going to kill the others._

[ink has dripped on the page in splotchy dots]

_I’m not. And I’m not going to let anything kill them, either._

_So, after breakfast, I’ll head to the forest and poke around a bit, see what’s going on. Maybe Conis simply didn’t come today? Maybe Enel has other plans, or is just letting us get used to the island before he springs the trap. He’s a crafty bastard, for all he’s a stupid arrogant prick of a human._

_Reasons upon reasons, and knowledge I yet not have._

_…Mom was always good for the quotes that made you sound a lot smarter than you really were._

_~KL_

* * *

The first thing Kelly noticed about the jungle was how eerily quiet it was. While birds and animals roamed somewhat on the fringes, the further she got into the depths, the less wildlife she heard.

“That is not a good sign,” she said to herself, leaping over a large root that seemed like it had been half pulled out of the tree. The day was just _full_ of not-good signs, and it had started with her not being able to find Conis’s house.

Kelly had found only the barest hint that anyone had ever lived along the beach, bits of burned wood and the faint imprint of what might had once been a foundation, though she wasn’t sure.

(Mistress?)

 _Peace, Gin, Shere_ , she assured her Familiars, who were back at the beach running interference. None of the Straw Hats would be able to follow her, not with Shere and Gin in their way. Her darlings were masters at the cuddly and mischievous cat antics that could keep a human’s attention firmly locked on them.

Something prickled down her spine, and acting on pure instinct, Kelly dove for the roots and the mud beneath them. She buried herself in it, coiling her magic tight and small in her chest and belly, just as she heard the flap of wings overhead, the scuttle of beetle-claws on the dead leaves.

A hiss made her hair stand on end, and Kelly began to sweat as a shadow fell over her, blocking the weak light that filtered down through the strong roots.

“Do _you_ think _that_ we _will_ actually _get_ a _trEat_ , Jooro?”

“ **The** Elders **will**  want **the** food all **for** themselves, **Noyoro**.”

“What _a_ pity, _Jooro_.”

“ **Do** you **think** the human ** _-_ born** will **allow** us to **take** some **flesh** from **the** _monso_ as **a** treat, Noyoro?”

“Unlikely, _Jooro_.”

“ **Indeed** , it **is** a **pity** , Noyoro.”

The things reminded her greatly of the creepy twins from that horror game Beth had been so gaga over – Outlive, or something similar. They were also terrifyingly articulate, which gave some notion to how strong they were.

 _And they’re not even the strongest_ , she thought with sudden panic. They had mentioned Elders after all, and the only beings to which clear-speaking Daemons would bow were those above them in the hierarchy.

She had to get to the others and get them the entire fuck off the island, right fucking now.

Kelly breathed in and out, listening raptly to the sounds of the leaving Daemons, before pulling herself out of the mud. She could clean herself up when she got back to the ship.

Now, she had to get the others and make sure they all got back to the ship-

A scream, inhuman, raging, hungry: “ **MAGUS**! I **SMELL** MAGUS!”

 _Oh no_.

A form crashed out of the trees, and every bone in Kelly’s body went ice-cold with terror.

It was fifteen feet from foot to the top of its head, and reminded her eerily of a Titan from that one dystopian manga back home. A distended, naked human being with only contorting bulges to indicate where in a human there might have been normal genitalia. Its arms drooped past its knees, clawed hands dragging on the ground as it stared at her with lidless, blue-black eyes.

 _Hungry_ eyes.

 _And on that day, humanity was given a grim reminder_ , a hysterical, gibbering part of her head supplied, and Kelly was frozen. She’d never seen a Daemon so near to human form without even _trying_ to maintain the form.

Even the ones back on Arabasta had shucked any vestiges of humanity early on.

“ **Magus** ,” the thing said, in hungry, horrible glee, skinned lips pulling back to reveal rows of razor sharp teeth.

“ **Magus** ,” it said again, and _moved_.

Kelly moved as well, stumbling back and over the roots, nearly blind with prey-terror as she ran for her life, dodging past trees and low-slinging branches. Only magic kept her upright, as it had done all those years ago, and only magic kept her running forwards, sobbing and crying for Gin and Shere.

( _MISTRESS, USE SORU!_ )

The order cut through the insane fear like a hot knife through butter, and her vision cleared, if but for a moment. Kelly could breathe through the stench of dying things once more. She wasn’t a child scared out of her mind any longer.

“ _Soru!_ ” she snarled, and the world blurred into a riot of colors.

She landed on sand, free of the forest and the fear that had swamped her.

“Fucking Daemons,” she hissed, and kept running.

She could smell the pirates all together – praise any gods listening – and began to sprint.

“GET BACK TO THE SHIP!” she screamed. The Straw Hats turned to stare at her, Zoro drawing his swords, Chopper and Usopp hurrying to her.

Then – hot, hungry breath on the air and her world was _pain_.

Teeth dug into the flesh at the crook of her neck and shoulder, and Kelly screamed in agony as a massive hand curled around her in a bruising grip. A laugh like the braying yelps of a dying donkey behind her, and she was smashed down, thudding against the sand.

“BASTARD!” Luffy’s voice, tight with rage.

The fear that had returned with the Daemon dripped away, and Kelly pushed out her Magic. The Daemon shrieked as the blood in its hand became as salt-water in the ocean, and it dropped her to the sand.

Now, she could feel the rumbling of many other feet on the ground, and heard the braying of things that were not hunting-dogs, but bore a superficial resemblance.

More Daemons.

Shit, shit, and _shitting fuck_.

Kelly shoved herself to her feet, blood dripping down her neck, and hurled herself forward. Gin and Shere were moving as well – Shere plucking Usopp and Chopper up and tossing them onto her back, Gin snagging Sanji and Nami, before both cats leapt to the ship.

The Magus ducked under, heaving Zoro and Luffy onto her back, and booked it for the ship. She noted Robin – the woman, despite Kelly’s personal opinion, was no one’s fool – already on the ship, her face sheened with fear-sweat.

“Oi! Ciel, put me down, let me kill that bastard!” Luffy yelled, and the air fluttered behind them.

 _Shit_.

Muscles bunched and tightened under her skin, and Kelly heaved Zoro and Luffy towards the ship, just before something like fire shot through her side. She bellowed – _it burned!_ – as she wrenched herself off the spear that had just barely missed her lower intestines.

She shattered the spear, leaping away from the open mouth and gnashing teeth of another humanoid Titan-Daemon. Then a hand seized the back of her jacket, and she was flying through the air with the Daemon’s thwarted shrieks of hunger behind her.

Kelly crashed onto the deck of the Merry, wheezing in pain, and heard Luffy shout “Go, go, go!”

She had enough presence of mind to call a puff of wind to the sails, her fingers dancing in a call she remembered Kureha teaching her back on Drum. It was only when the sails filled with a crack, and the Merry practically shot forward, that Kelly leaned back and gulped air.

“Ahhhhh, we need a doctor!” Chopper’s screech was reassuringly frantic, until she felt his hooves on her stomach.

She whacked him away, pulling herself up to her elbows.

“Are they following us?” she asked, her voice hoarse. She was hyper-aware of the dried tear tracks on her face.

“No, they are not.” This from Robin, who leaned against the railing, her head turned towards the beach.

She would have looked cool and unaffected to a normal onlooker, but Kelly could smell the fear and see the way her hands still trembled.

Though that wasn’t entirely fair, as Kelly herself was still sweat-soaked and shivering. She could feel the last vestiges of the fear-drug those Daemons had exuded swirling in her system, and carefully threaded her Magic towards them.

Her belly rolled.

That had been a mistake, she thought, managing to turn to her side as nausea spiked in the wake of the Magi’s path, and she vomited black bile onto the deck of the Merry. Her shoulders heaved, over and over again, as her body expelled the poison in the most efficient way it knew how.

When the heaving stopped, she wiped her mouth, feeling woozy.

“Gods, I fucking hate those things,” she said, and collapsed back against Shere, who whuffled in her hair like an overly curious horse.

“Ciel, what happened? What were those things?” This from Nami, as she helped Chopper clean up the mess Kelly had left.

“Daemons, what else?” Kelly replied, surreptitiously checking the winds filling the sails. They held, to her relief. “Oozing some sort of fear-pheromones, or something equally pleasant.”

The ship jumped and shuddered, rocking to and fro. The winds fled as the ship was pulled elsewhere, and another familiar scent reached her nose.

Not the thing pulling along the ship – that was a normal crab, albeit a grotesquely oversized one that didn’t seem to hear her when she called to it. No, she smelled the things _following_ it, and wanted to cry with frustration.

Like the mutated banawanis back at Crocodile’s Rainbase, these things had been twisted and ravaged by the attentions of less-than-kind Daemons. Immense fish with drooling tongues from what she could sense, leaking pus and blood into the water as they leapt towards the ship and the crab that bore it away.

The only saving grace was that the crab was substantially faster than the creatures. Nami, Usopp, and Chopper were majorly panicking

“Fucking hell,” Kelly groaned, dropping back against Shere’s side.

“What is it?” Zoro stood next to her, and crouched down on his hunkerbones.

“We’re being chased,” she said, gesturing at the monsters following. Zoro went to get a good look, and after a moment she could hear him cursing.

“Scoundrel, you need help getting up?” Sanji stood over her, and she looked up at him, curious.

His ears went red, but he kept looking at her, almost defiantly. She blinked, and then grinned, accepting the hand and the help. There was a moment of vertigo as she stood, but it passed quickly. Even though she didn’t need to, she kept a loose grip around Sanji’s hand, one that took him far too long to tug away from.

“Where is this thing taking us?!” Usopp’s shriek pulled her away from the way Sanji’s eyes shone, and back to the problem at hand.

“Nowhere good, to be sure,” Kelly said, going to join the group at the far end of the ship. “But we can’t afford to make it stop. It’s faster than those things, after all.”

“Are they like the banawanis back in Arabasta? Do they come from the same place- AND YOU NEED TO HAVE YOUR WOUNDS BANDAGED!” Chopper yelled, pointing a hoof at Kelly.

“Oh, come on Chopper, I’m all right,” she said, keenly aware now of the pain still throbbing in her neck and her side, and the blood that ruined her clothes.

“No, Ciel,” Chopper protested. “You’re hurt and you need-”

“Chopper, leave it, I’m _fine_ -”

“Ciel.”

Luffy’s voice was calm and a little annoyed, and he folded his arms over his chest. There was something in his gaze, something that made it impossible to look away from.

Kelly sighed, rubbed a hand over her face, and growled. “Fine. Let me know when we’re in range of land, because none of you are getting anywhere near shore until I can confirm there are no Daemons near it. If they have any nasty surprises waiting, they’ll be much less likely to kill me.”

She caught Zoro’s gaze.

“You weren’t so durable against them yourself,” he pointed out, and she tried not to bristle.

“I was unprepared,” she bit out. “And I paid for it. I will survive these wounds like I survived the attacks, and like I have survived similar attacks as a child – you would not be _nearly_ so lucky.”

“As a child,” Zoro stated, and Kelly wanted to kick her own ass for the slip.

“That’s irrelevant,” she said, and turned away. “Lead on, Doctor.”

“You were attacked by these things as a child,” Zoro pressed, and Kelly hid her scowl by turning away. She hadn’t been a child, not truly.

“Again, _like I said_ , it’s irrelevant. Let’s go, Chopper,” and she followed the reindeer to his small office.

Unlike the one he would eventually have on the Sunny, this wasn’t quite so big and grand, but it reflected the exacting nature of the doctor who worked there. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all starkly sterilized, and everything with borderline-military levels of neatness, from the precisely folded edges of the bed sheets, to the stacks of books lined in razor-neat rows on the bookshelves.

Chopper wasn’t military, but he’d grown up with someone who as good as was. Kureha was a crazy old bat, but Kelly couldn’t see her expecting anything less than organized perfection from her student.

“Take your jacket off and sit on the bed,” Chopper ordered, and Kelly froze.

“Is that really necessary?” she asked, though she did sit on the bed. “Can’t I just lift it up?”

Chopper blinked at her. “Well, yes! I need to see your wounds to properly bandage and treat them, so please don’t start acting like Zoro. He’s a pain.”

“Figuratively and literally,” Kelly said under her breath, and Chopper giggled.

“You’re not wrong. Now, don’t worry. Doctorine told me to be careful of your blood, because you’re a Snake. I had to do the same for her, since she’s a Dragon…well, since she has Dragon blood.”

Kelly closed her eyes and bit her tongue hard. Had Kureha not told Chopper she was a Magus?

“Very well,” she said grudgingly, and pulled her jacket off as Chopper clambered up to stand beside her. Under it, she wore her tank top, but Chopper flapped a hand at that as well in his impatience.

“Take that off as well, and turn around, I need to see how far the hole goes,” he said, and Kelly shuddered.

“Chopper, I-”

“Look, I really need to see it, Ciel!” Chopper said, putting his hooves on his hips.

“Chopper-”

“It’s not going to help anyone if it gets infected, and I don’t even know what sort of germs those things would have on them-”

“ _Chopper, I can’t!_ ”

The reindeer startled back at the snarl that erupted from Kelly. The Magus shuddered again, her eyes overfull. She could feel every single one of her scars, each of the raised markings burning as though she’d gotten them only days before, instead of months earlier.

“I can’t,” she whispered again, her hands inching up over her shoulders. “I _can’t_.”

There was silence for a time, before Chopper sat back, and nodded.

“Can you pull up your shirt in front?” he asked, his voice gentle, and Kelly nodded.

Chopper clucked over the state of the wound, though it had considerably healed.

It no longer looked like the spear had gone all the way through, just as the bite on her neck no longer looked as though a great chunk had been torn out of it. It was still raw, turning black at the edges as her Magic battled against whatever godforsaken bacteria those Daemons had been carrying around.

Chopper was efficient and quick – both the wound in her stomach and the bite mark on her neck were doctored and bandaged in record time. Just as Kelly was pulling her shirt back down, the door opened.

Usopp stood there, panting a little.

“We’ve reached land!”

* * *

**Meanwhile, in the encampment of the Shandian tribes…**

“ _Mea domina_.”

The woman, who sat perched on one of the many, intricately carved totems that dotted throughout the landscape, startled, nearly falling off the side of the pillar in her surprise.

She was a pretty, petite woman, her dark-blond hair pulled tight into a braid at the base of her neck, her bright blue eyes gleaming in a pale face. She looked to the ground, her white and brown-splotched wings shifting to steady her.

A fox, about five feet tall, sat at the bottom of the totem, looking up at her. It was all over purple-white, with only one tail showing, though in truth it had seven.

She leapt down, landing easily beside her Familiar.

“What is it?” The Magus asked her oldest, and longest surviving companion, as the two of them began their daily walk around the outer perimeter of the camp, checking for weaknesses.

“Your man, Wiper. He grows restless.”

She scoffed. “As well as say that the sun rises and falls every day. Wiper was _born_ restless, though he has reason for it.”

All Shandians did, as the boundaries that kept them safe from the monsters outside chafed at them. Even her. Perhaps even especially her.

“We’re not strong enough to root out the Daemons, and he knows that…Wait a min- _Wiper is not my man!_ ” Her voice was just barely below a screech, though she could feel her cheeks flushing.

She cursed her pale cheeks for the thousandth time, and wished her complexion had more favored her mother's instead of her father's. While her mother had been fairly dark, her father had been pale skinned - a mainlander as far back as his lineage could be traced, or so her mother had said.

A land stealer, as Wiper had often said. She sighed, rubbing a hand over her face. It wasn’t as though he was wrong to think so – she had seen both sides, and sided with the Shandians often as not. But none of that mattered.

Wiper would never see her as anything _but_ the stupid, sniveling child of a land stealer. She’d made that first impression stick well enough.

She’d been crying, when she’d come to the tribe years before, clinging to her mother’s skirts and protesting loudly the change in their circumstance. She had wanted to go back to their cool, airy home where they lived with Papa, not in some old, stinky cloth-houses! She had wanted to be with the other kids her age, even if they did point and stare at Mama all the time.

She had cried and acted like a brat for so long, homesick and careless about everything. It had driven Mama mad, trying to curb her childishness, to make her into something worth being proud of.

It had taken Mama’s death to accomplish that in truth, though even now she still failed, was still _never good enough_ -

Wiper watched over her because she was the tribe’s only Magus – even if she was a pathetic one – and because it was his duty. Nothing more, nothing less. He would bind her himself, to make sure his tribe, his people would be safe.

She was nothing to him, beyond that.

_-…Her stomach hits the ground, and she feels herself curse when a spear embeds in the ground a mere inch from her face. She had been so close to the boundary, and now she would never be able to get away._

_“Coward.” The voice is familiar, as is the dizzying taste of anger and fear in her belly._

_“’M not a coward!” the little girl protests, her wings straining to throw off the Shandian watchdog who had been assigned to her by her mother._

_“Running away is a coward’s act,” Wiper says, his voice so full of disgust it made her eyes sting. “I would have thought the blood of Nephele more courageous, but that only came to your Mother I see.”_

_The tears spill over her cheeks. She is tired. She is so incredibly tired of words like duty and words like courage, when she just wants to see Rena and Davi and her other friends at school once more, to walk along the streets and run to her father and have him call her his most precious girl._

_She does not want to be the Magus of this tribe. She does not want to be a Magus at all._

_“I hate you!” she cries, her fingers digging into the ground like claws. “I hate you so much, you dirty, awful boy! I hope you die!_ I wanna go home! _”_

_He does not respond._

_He so rarely does…-_

Her Familiar nuzzled her hand, and the woman came back to herself with a start.

“Sorry for that, Su,” she apologized. “I get too caught up in my memories.”

The fox curled around her, her tail wrapping around her legs in a facsimile of a hug, before she grinned up at her. “I think you underestimate Wiper, and think too poorly of yourself,” she said.

“You’re a nosey little brat, I swear-”

“Conis!”

At the shout, the Magus turned to meet a woman dressed in warrior’s skins. Laki rushed to greet her, her arms curling very lightly around Conis’s shoulders, as though she feared the other woman fragile.

“Laki, my sister,” Conis replied, smiling up at the taller woman. They were not sisters in truth, but more in spirit.

And Laki had been the chosen mate of Conis’s sister in Magic-

 _No_. No, Conis would not (could not) think of her goodsister, or the fate that had befallen her when she had been caught out of the boundaries protecting Conis’s life. She would not think of those horrors, or the caution-tales Mama had told her of what became of Magi caught by Daemons unawares.

She would keep her mind in the here and now. And she would thank the goddesses that Laki still spoke with her at all, when by rights she could have demanded the Magus’s head under the Laws – human or no.

“Why are you not with Wiper?” Conis asked, as the two walked along, Su just behind them. Laki sighed, and looked away.

“He has asked me to watch over you,” Laki said slowly, and Conis stiffened.

“Does he think I will run just because the Blue Sea Dwellers have a Snake with them? Does he think me pathetic enough to leave you all to die just for my own benefit?!” Her wings flared, each feather quivering with her rage.

She did want to meet the Snake, and the fact that she could not chafed at everything her Mama had ever taught her about the Laws, but she knew her gods-damned duty! She knew she could not leave the barrier and her people.

“No, Conis, he simply wants you safe. He does not trust the Snake, and fears that if you do greet it as is custom of your people, that it might…speak ill words to you…” Laki finished lamely.

Her rage bloomed like a deadly thing inside her, fueled with shame and embarrassment and the grief of rejection. Over and over, he made his views so clear to her in these insulting ways.

“So, he simply thinks I am stupid and easily swayed enough by the words of an outsider, that I would forsake our tribe at the very thought? Or perhaps it is simply _his_ tribe, as he has made it clear it was never mine.”

Tears ached in her throat, and she wondered how often she would have to pay for the stupidity of her youth, and for how long Wiper would never let her forget the mistakes she had made.

“Conis…” Laki looked lost, and a little bit frightened. Conis rubbed at her stinging eyes.

“Go away, Laki. Go back to Wiper and tell him he nothing to worry about. I will not run.”

“My friend-”

“ _Go away!_ ”

She went, and Conis shuddered out a long, awful breath that verged on a sob, before dropping to her knees.

Her anger was draining away, replaced by a whirl of emotions, shame the most clear of them all. But determination was there as well, and a very quiet little voice that whispered _I must do something right_.

_For once in my life, I must do something right._

“You know, _mea domina_ ,” Su said. “I remember one of your goodsister’s dreams. She spoke thus of a Snake who would come to these lands in the company of pirates, whose power made it one of the strongest Magi to walk the world in centuries. Perhaps that is the Snake that bested Wiper.”

“What are you saying, Su?”

“You cannot leave this tribe because it would put your people in danger to do so, and because the wards are not strong enough to allow for such a thing. But if you had a Magi whose power surpassed even your mother’s on your side…perhaps you can even strike a blow into the heart of the Daemons. Perhaps you can eradicate them from the lands itself.”

Conis trembled.

“How am I to get word, then? I cannot leave.”

Su straightened, and smiled. “You have me, _mea domina_. I am the fastest animal in all of the land, and even the _shikaae_ cannot catch me when I move. Write your letter to the Snake, and I will find them.”

Conis ran her fingers over her Familiar’s soft fur. “I can’t put you in danger,” she whispered.

The _I can’t lose you, too_ went unsaid.

“We are all in danger. We will be in still more if Wiper’s restlessness gets the better of him, and he and the others leave in a vain attempt to reclaim his land as he plans now,” Su said, and Conis reared back.

“By the Goddesses, he wouldn’t!” To take the warriors from the tribe, to throw them all at the Daemon and Enel – Enel and his priests would be an obstacle enough, but with the Daemons…

“It would be suicide,” she whispered.

Su gave her fox-shrug. “He is a young man, whose line comes from the greatest of Shandia’s warriors. He has watched many horrors plague his lands, and been offered countless insults. And above all, he is a deeply prideful man, one who has watched the people under his guard be savaged by monsters and humans alike. He is desperate, perhaps, to protect what he can. And he longs to do something that will make sure his people will no longer live in fear. His pride has taken many blows throughout his life.

“He is much like you, in that regard.”

Conis’s fingers shook as they sat together for a moment, then she pushed herself up.

“No time like the present,” she whispered, and hurried to her tent. With Wiper hopefully occupied, she would have some uninterrupted time to write her letter.

She prayed to the Goddesses that the Snake was the one Erin had spoken of before she had been captured, and that the Snake would be willing to help.

_Oh goddesses, ye mighty and fair, send a touch of good luck to us on this day. Vaayu Saamraagyee, guide me on this day and on the days that come. De’ny ho deataon._

Conis Allbright, the last living Magus of the Shandian tribes, sat down at the small desk in her tent, and began to write.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **FOOTNOTES AND TRANSLATIONS**
> 
> **Mea domina** – _Sermo_ ; title: Means ‘my lady’ in the Common Tongue. Used to address mid-ranking Magi children, usually those whose lineage could be traced back to the Goddesses.
> 
>  **Goodsister** – A respectful term used by Magi to describe female Magi with whom they are very close, though not related by blood.
> 
>  **Shikaae** – _Sermo_ ; noun: Translates to ‘hunter(s)’ in the Common Tongue.
> 
>  **De’ny ho deataon** – _Sermo_ ; phrase: Best translates to ‘blessed are the gods'


	28. Princess of the Tower

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A servant girl delivers a meal, as Kelly educates the Straw Hats.

* * *

There was a cold chill in the air as Margate Whist hurried out of the kitchen and to the tower in the very middle of Lord Kami-sama’s home. It was an honor, the small Birkan girl thought, to be given such a task.

Matron had even said that Lord Kami-sama had told her to have one of her girls bring food to his wife, and since no one else had been able to go, she’d told Margate. He didn’t want one of ‘his coarse soldiers’ tending to the Lady, the Matron said, and that Margate _had_ to be on her best behavior, and not to disturb the Lady, who had fits occasionally.

She was small and clumsy, Margate was, and barely anything to look at – her hair was brown and her eyes were brown and her wings were rather crooked. She wondered how beautiful the Lord Kami-sama’s wife was. She surely had to be the most beautiful woman in the world, if Lord Kami-sama had married her.

Margate had never seen the Lady before, and had barely ever seen the Handmaids, who all remained in the Tower to guard the Lady. But now she would get a chance! She giggled, resisting the urge to dance and maybe drop the tray.

“Wait! Mar, stop for a minute.” The shout behind her halted her in her tracks.

A tall girl, dressed in the same stark-white uniform-dress Margate wore, hobbled over. She was taller than Margate by a head and a half, her eyes a bright blue, and her skin fair darker than most of the other girls Margate knew.

People had said that Ebba Wuyo’s mother had been of the barbaric Shandians, but Margate didn’t know how she could have been. Kasa Wuyo had been a gentle, soft woman before she died, nothing at all like those stories of the slavering, bloodthirsty Shandians they had been taught of by their tutors.

“Ebba! I must get this food to the Lady before it gets cold. What’s wrong?”

The older girl had a placid face most days, but Margate could see the worry in her large eyes.

“May I walk with you, little sister?” It was a common thing, for all the girls who worked in the home of the Lord Kami-sama to call each other sister.

“Of course, big sister.”

They walked at a quick pace to the Tower, in silence. Then Ebba spoke.

“Sister, what do you know of the Lady and the Tower?”

Margate thought on that. “That she is the Lord Kami-sama’s wife, and that she is ill and must be protected. That the Tower is heavily guarded by soldiers and by the Handmaidens, who are sworn by their lives to protect her?”

The selfsame Tower loomed in the distance.

Ebba smiled wryly. “I suppose that is true. But, Margate?”

She looked up at the older girl, and saw her tremble, which sent a fission of fear down Margate’s back.

“Margate, whatever you do, do it quickly. Do not stop, do not dally for anything inside the Tower. Get the food to the Lady and get gone, am I clear?” Ebba’s voice was hard and fierce, and Margate yelped as the girl seized her shoulders in a firm grip.

“Big sister, what-”

“No matter what you see, tell me that you will not stop, that you will not converse with anyone. If you must greet them, do so as quickly and politely as you can and get _out_. Give the food to the Lady and _leave_ , for your own life.”

Ebba’s hands were like claws digging into her skin. “I don’t underst-”

“Promise me.”

“But why-”

“ _Promise me!_ ”

Margate nodded frantically, her eyes stinging with tears at the harsh treatment. Ebba sighed, sitting back, and kissed her forehead. Her fingers were no longer like claws.

“Tell me that you will, Margate.”

“I-I will do my duty quickly and leave quickly, without dawdling,” Margate stammered a bit, jolted by the sudden change in mood.

“And be safe, darling sister,” Ebba whispered, and there was grief on her dark face now, and old pain.

“I-what could possibly harm me in the heart of the Lord Kami-sama’s domain?” Margate asked, bewildered.

Ebba laughed, a sound with no joy. “You would be surprised. Now go.”

Margate watched instead as Ebba walked away, favoring her left leg as though it pained her greatly, before turning and hurrying on her way.

_Ebba did like to speak in useless riddles_ , Margate thought, bowing to the soldiers at the door.

They let her through with only a cursory look over, which struck Margate as rather strange, considering they were responsible for the Lady’s safety. But then again, the Lady had her Handmaids, and all who spoke of them said they were a hundred times more vicious and protective than any mere man could ever be.

Margate gasped as the door opened before her, and for the first time she saw the true splendor of the Tower.

The walls – which went so far above her head that she could not see where they ended – were a pure marble, with a spiraling staircase carved of strange metal embedded into the faintly glowing stone, along with countless gems and precious stones that shone dully in the faded light. The black-wood floors were polished mirror-bright, and a path of white stone led to a smaller tower in the middle of the building. Something metal was grinding, though the sound was muffled.

Margate shivered. She wasn’t used to buildings without windows.

Even the rooms where she and five other girls lived were full of them, usually always thrown wide to catch the warmth of the sun, or a cool breeze. There was no breeze in this Tower, nor the light of the sun.

Why would the Lord Kami-sama subject his beloved wife to such a gloomy place?

Perhaps he just wanted in her somewhere she could be adequately protected…

Ebba’s strange words came back to her then, as did the bitter laugh she had voiced when Margate had wondered what possible.

Margate felt sick in her stomach then, sick and cold.

But then door opened in the middle of the smaller tower, and the most beautiful woman Margate had ever seen in her life stepped out. Margate gasped, unable to help it.

The woman was tall and impossibly curved, like the ladies from those erotic books the boys giggled over in their barracks. She wore red silk that clung to her body, cut low to showcase cleavage that Margate knew the older girls would have whispered in envy about. Her blue-black hair was curled and piled into a lazy knot atop her head, letting a few curls escape to frame a pale face carved with high cheekbones and lush red lips.

“My, you must be the new girl.” Even her voice was beautiful, warm and curiously accented.

_No matter what you see, tell me that you will not stop, that you will not converse with anyone. If you_ must _greet them, do so as quickly and politely as you can and get out!_

Margate curtsied clumsily with the tray in her hands, Ebba’s words ringing like a siren in her head. “I have come to bring food to the Lady,” she said, and nothing more.

Those perfectly arched brows raised, and the woman smiled. It was not a pleasant thing to be on the receiving end of, and Margate had the sudden impression of standing before the eyes of some great, bloodthirsty beast.

She did not tremble, feeling Ebba’s hands on her shoulders. The memory of it grounded her.

Then the woman laughed, and beckoned. “Come, child. Let us feed the dear… _Lady_. We wouldn’t want her to become too thin, now would we?”

Margate followed her to the door she had exited from, and stood inside the small room. The walls were made of all glass around them, and Margate could see metal gears and such embedded in the walls outside of the glass.

She jerked, nearly losing her balance as the room shuddered and started moving up. A hand on her shoulder steadied her, and Margate looked up into the eyes of the Handmaiden. They were pitch-black, as cold as the hand on her shoulder was.

“Careful, don’t fall,” the Handmaiden said, smiling insincerely.

Again Margate thought of Ebba, and said nothing as the moving room took them to the very top of the Tower. (Though she did look curiously around at the strangeness of it all. Imagine, a room being able to do this!)

The door opened, and the Handmaiden stepped out into a large hall. She guided Margate and her tray around the hall – which curved in a circle around the smaller tower and its moving room – past several doors, before stopping at one and pushing it open.

“Sisters!” she called, her voice viciously amused. “A new girl has come, to bring nourishment to the great _Lady_!”

Laughter - rolling, feminine, and every bit as mocking as the Handmaiden’s – rolled out, bright and peeling, as the Handmaiden ushered Margate into the room.

It was as wide and spacious as the rest of the Tower, with plush carpeting, and walls painted a deep, warm blue. The furnishings – chaises, and pillows were strewn everywhere, for comfort and warmth – were splendid things, befitting the Lord Kami-sama’s lady with all silk and velvet. But Margate’s attention was drawn to the group of women gathered around a small dais situated in the middle of the room.

They were the Handmaidens. No other women could be quite so beautiful, or so entrancing to the eyes as the Handmaidens. They were a canopy of riotous, sensual colors – from the breathtaking silk clinging to their every curve, to the luscious manes of hair that they wore in varying fashions.

It was strange, though. They were all pale skinned. Cloud-pale skinned, varying shades of ice-cold-snow. Margate was used to the different skin colors of her friends – while many were some shade of pale, they weren’t like this. As though they’d never seen the sun.

One woman, with long swirls of blue-blonde hair that dripped curls around her beautiful face, leaned forward and smiled, showing all her teeth. “My, such a diligent little girl, to be so loyal to your… _Lady_.”

The women tittered.

“Now, none of that, Uusoae,” a woman to her left, one with lips as red as blood and hair as white as snow, said, holding a fan to her lips to hide her expression. “So, darling girl, what is your name?”

The feeling of being prey before a beast was stronger now, and Margate could just barely control the trembling.

“Dear heart, come closer,” a woman with eyes like black pits said. Her yellow robes spilled low to showcase her cleavage.

“ _Enough_.” The voice was quiet, firm, and tired, and it came from the woman sitting on the dais, in the middle of the wild bouquet of ladies surrounding her.

Margate took one look at the woman sitting on the golden chair, and knew without having to be told that this was the Lord Kami-sama’s Lady.

Her first thought was one of confusion. How could the Lord Kami-sama choose someone so-so ugly looking?

She was painfully thin, for starters, her stark cheekbones jutting out of a face meant for plumpness and vitality. Her skin might have once been a creamy gold, but now looked ashen and almost unnatural, almost sickly. Her clothing was opulent, of course – all silk in vibrant colors - but fit badly, and she did not seem comfortable in it.

There were gold bracelets on her ankles and wrists, and a large golden collar around her neck, embedded with flashing stones Margate had no name for.

She looked exhausted and ill, not like any _Lady_ , and for a moment Margate wondered why the Lord Kami-sama had chosen someone like this as his wife.

Then Margate looked into the woman’s eyes. They were pools of black-brown, swirling with warmth and light that none of the Handmaidens could ever hope to emulate. They shone with power and will and determination, and Margate trembled then, at the caged storm that sat on the dais before her.

… _caged_?

Why had she thought that-

“Bring the Lady her food, girl,” the Handmaiden who had greeted her sneered, shoving her forward.

A snarl from the Lady stopped the Handmaiden in her tracks. Her teeth were bared when Margate’s eyes shot up to hers, and her rage seemed to fill the whole room. There was a perilous stillness in the air, and the Handmaiden took a step back.

“You don’t order me around, _My Lady_ ,” she hissed, the words a mockery.

“No, perhaps not,” the Lady said, and her bearing was as regal as the Lord Kami-sama’s. “But I hold something important in my hands, something you cannot see taken from you in fear of your life.”

The Handmaidens shied away, and the woman behind Margate made a noise that, in a lesser woman, might have been one of fear.

“You would not dare! You know what will happen to your precious Shandians if you try-”

“What will that matter? I will be beyond you, and you will have the breaking of your Contract to deal with. Take the girl’s tray, and _let her leave_.”

The room was on a knife’s edge for several aching moments, before the Handmaiden sniffed, and took the tray. She brought it to the woman, setting it on her lap.

“My apologies for not letting it be warm, my Lady,” she said, her smile only reaching one side of her mouth. “The girl… _dawdled_.”

“With you toying with her, I’m not surprised. Thank you, my girl,” the Lady said, and smiled so sadly at Margate that she just had to do _something_.

Margate clutched her skirts in both hands, and for the first time in her life executed a proper curtsey, low and reverent.

“May you be well, my Lady,” she whispered, before looking back up. The woman’s eyes were soft now, and kind.

Then she raised her hands slowly, as if the sumptuous golden bracelets weighed a great deal, and made shooing motions. Margate hurried to the door, and out of the room.

The traveling up-down room moved the moment she was safely inside, carrying her to the bottom floor, past all of the fine luxuries of the Tower’s interior. She stepped out of the room and back into the ground floor, hurrying along the path to the outer door.

Her hand on the wood, the Birkan girl stopped, and looked around. The crystals on the walls sparkled fiercely now, glowing with a painful light that Margate shied away from.

And in the distance, far above her, she heard something like a scream of agony mixed with the Handmaidens’ laughter, and she trembled.

Margate hurried out of the Tower, and did not stop until she reached her rooms. Closing the door behind her, she looked up to see Ebba sitting on her bed.

Tears stung at her eyes and spilled over.

“W-Why am I crying?” she asked the older girl in a pitiful voice.

“Oh, Mar,” Ebba whispered, and held out her hands. Margate rushed into them as the tears came in a flood.

“I don’t know w-why I’m crying, Ebba!” she wailed into the girl’s chest. “But the Lady, the Lady-”

The image of the unnaturally pale and sickly Lady, with her golden jewelry like chains-

Like she was prisoner, and not a _Lady_.

“Margate, you must be strong for her, all right? Be strong for the Lady, and for me, and go about your day to day life, do you understand?” Ebba said softly.

“But it’s…it’s not right!”

“Oh, sister, I know. I know. But we must _live_ , for us and for her. We cannot draw punishment on her or on anyone else even if we know this is wrong.”

Margate threw herself back, glaring up at Ebba. She still didn’t know why she was so angry and so sad, wasn’t able to understand it fully. “You’re a c-coward! We should protect our Lady, so why won’t you-”

“I already tried.” Ebba reached down, and pulled her dress up, over her left leg.

Margate gasped. She had known that Ebba had trouble with walking, and mentioned on occasion that her leg pained her, but the ruin before her eyes horrified her.

Ebba’s leg was mangled, twisted and lame, covered in massive amounts of scar tissue as though something had tried to rip it off.

“I tried to say something, and I nearly died in the process. I was lucky only the Handmaidens’ dogs went after me, and luckier still that the Lady intervened for me. The dogs instead went after her, and I was forced to watch.” Ebba’s voice was flat and cold. “So yes, I will keep my peace, and will say and do nothing that will cost her more pain or fear. And neither shall you.”

Margate, still sniveling, wiped her eyes and nodded.

“Come here, _nānu_ ,” Ebba crooned, and Margate did so, crawling into her sister’s arms to cry anew.

“Why would Lord Kami-sama permit-?” the girl sobbed, and Ebba shushed her quickly, rocking her as gently as was possible.

The two girls held each other as the day passed into night, and no one came to get them. Not even Matron, well known for her strict hand with the girls under her watch bothered them.

As Margate’s breath slowed out, and her sobs faded into a deep, exhausted sleep, Ebba looked out the window to the Tower in the distance.

If she were the sort, she might have prayed for guidance.

But she did not know who – or rather, _what_ \- might hear her if she did.

* * *

“No Daemons-”

“Well, that’s something, I suppose.”

“You didn’t let me finish,” Kelly said mildly. “There are no Daemons around the river _currently_ , but there have been Daemons here _before_. I would surmise that this river has been used as an ambush site for those foolish enough to linger.”

Usopp went ashen. “Oh, my mistake then.”

“You know Daemons well?”

Robin had come up to watch as Kelly leapt back onto the boat. The Magus’s eyes narrowed at the archaeologist, who held up her hands in a defensive gesture.

“I only ask because it seems you know them better than all of us,” Robin said, her voice soothing. “Any advantage we can gain will only aid us further in survival.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Kelly said grudgingly. “But I don’t know much.”

“Anything you can tell us would be appreciated.”

The Straw Hats gathered around her, eyes wary, fearful, or just plain watchful. Kelly sighed, and rubbed a hand over her face.

“What _do_ you know about Daemons?”

The pirates exchanged looks.

“In East Blue they’re mostly legend,” Zoro said, his voice quiet. “But I’ve met one or two before.”

“So have I,” Nami said, and her eyes were dark with past memories. “They were…they were monsters, and they ate all they could get their hands on. They were never able to take human forms, or speak.”

“How did you get away?”

Nami grinned, showing every last one of her teeth. “Fire,” she and Zoro said in unison, and the two of them looked at each other in surprise.

Kelly laughed a bit, as Gin and Shere leapt onto Merry’s figurehead to keep watch. “Fire works the best at keeping them at bay, or for killing them if at all possible, especially if you do not have the brute strength needed to tear them apart.”

The Magus sat back, remembering what Kureha had taught her. “I don’t know the hierarchy ranks especially, but from what I have known, it is separated into three distinct groups. The Horde are the lowest, and can barely keep a human form. It is only the strongest of them that are capable of human speech, and them only just. The Servants are the next level. They are the ones capable of creating Thralls.”

“Like the spider woman we faced in Arabasta?” Usopp asked, and Kelly’s eyes snapped to his.

“ _What?_ ”

Usopp flinched back a bit. “We, uh, we fought a Daemon with a bunch of...Thralls in Arabasta?” he offered lamely, and Kelly stared at him in blank shock.

“Y-You managed to escape from a Servant and her Thralls.”

“Yeah!” Chopper piped up, casually clinging to Usopp’s shoulder. “It was scary, but we did it! Usopp set her on fire, too!”

_Two_ _non-Magi, two of the acknowledged weakest members of the Straw Hats, and they defeated something that would have killed me twice as old as they..._

_And to think the fandom called him a coward_ , Kelly thought, looking at Usopp in a new light. _He wants so desperately to be a brave warrior of the sea – but I think he has already well grasped his dream in hand._

_His only problem, I think, is_ realizing _it._

“Usopp…you’re amazing, do you know that?” Kelly said wonderingly. “You too, Chopper.”

Both reindeer and boy blushed, flailing a bit.

“In any case, Servants generally are incapable of being killed by humans - unless said humans have a very quick mind and an array of bombs, it seems,” she said, grinning at the two.

Then her smile died. “And the greatest of all Daemons…the Highborn.”

Quiet spread throughout the ship, a quiet broken only by the near-silent sounds of the river, and the desolate wind through the immense trees.

“You fought some in Arabasta,” Zoro said, and she looked up at him. “You and Ace both did.”

“You’re correct.” Her eyes found Sanji’s then, and she saw the fear that flickered through them before it was quickly hidden. “Something you must know about all Daemons, _regardless_ of the hierarchy...they consume flesh. It does not matter if it is animal, human, or some combination of the two, like myself. They are endlessly, endlessly hungry, though the higher in rank, the more exact they are about what and how they eat.”

She leaned back, looking up at the tiny bits of sky she could see through the canopy.

“Fear is their drink, blood is their wine. The Highborn have a desperate love of it, and the Servants – such that they can – emulate them to the best of their ability. They have spent centuries upon centuries learning how best to get these things for themselves. How to mimic humans, how to entrance the unwary and such. They kidnap humans and anyone, _anything_ else they please, and do what they wish.”

There was not a single stoic face among the Straw Hats, apart from Zoro, who looked more ill than unmoved.

“I don’t know their range of powers, but I have seen incredible strength, speed, and endurance from them. Manipulation of shadows, control over lesser creatures, the things they are capable of creating – it is only the smallest fraction of what I suspect Daemons are capable of. But one of their deadliest abilities, and only a scant few can do this…they can negate Devil Fruit powers.”

Dead silence and pale faces abounded. Kelly smiled without any true humor.

“Not all of them, of course, and only certain ones are able, and I’ve only met one or two. Logia types may very well be immune, as Ace was in Arabasta. But, yes. There are Daemons capable of negating Devil Fruit powers.”

She sighed. “So now you know everything I know about Daemons. Trust no one you meet on the Line, especially not those who appear to be comely humans, those humans who look too beautiful to be true. If you must trust anyone, trust those like me.”

“Those like you?” Robin looked fascinated, but also wary, her eyes wide and curious.

Kelly rolled back her sleeve to show her scales. “Non-humans. Fishmen, Snakemen, and all our kin.”

“And Dragon-people and winged folk, too!” Chopper exclaimed. “Like Doctorine!”

Kelly grinned. “Exactly so, Chopper. From what Doctorine herself told me, Daemons cannot take the forms of non-humans, no matter of what race they are.”

“Ehhhhhh! That old hag wasn’t human?” Luffy spoke up for the first time, his eyes wide.

The Magus whacked him upside the head. “Show some respect, you dumbass,” she sniffed at him, fighting not to laugh. “But, yes, Ageha is not human. Her lineage comes from Dragons, who are second only to the Phoenix in terms of their healing abilities.”

“Why didn’t she tell us?” Nami asked.

“Because most of you are very much human, and non-humans have been taught early on, by tales or by hard experience, that trusting humans is a foolish concept,” Kelly said, feeling uncomfortably like she was betraying Ageha by saying this. “Especially those non-humans who are considered a _rare delicacy_ by the slave markets of humanity. Dragon-people are among those.”

More silence, and dawning horror. Chopper looked quiet and sad. Kelly sighed again, regretting her words. _Christ_ , but she always had a way of ‘improving the mood’, didn’t she.

“But that’s irrelevant, and not likely to ever be a problem,” she said with a small smile and nod. “Our problem are the _Daemons_ here. I’ve never fought against Daemons whose bestial forms were so human, and we have no idea how many there are-”

A snarl interrupted from Gin, to be echoed by one from Shere. Kelly was on her feet and on the railing, just as a piercing screech echoed through the woods, one she had heard before. The Horde was hunting.

Then she heard – or rather _felt_ \- something else, something that reached out and grabbed at her Magic. It wasn’t an assault or any attempt to steal what was hers, but rather like a hand desperately clutching at her sleeves, pleading for help.

Gin and Shere were moving as her Magic roared in her veins, though she was not even aware of it. Now full-sized, her Familiars leapt into the trees with equal snarls of rage. As they disappeared from the sight of the Straw Hats – though not from hers – they were met with more of the inhuman shrieks.

The noise was indescribable, but soon Gin and Shere exploded back out of the tree line. A ragged white bundle was clamped in Gin’s jaws, and Kelly knew in an instant that it had been what had called out to her.

Her feet tapped off the railing, just as the first of the Daemons came through the trees, howling grotesquely. These were members of the Horde, the lowest of the low, more pools of twisted and warped monstrosity than anything that could or should exist in the natural world.

Not animal or human Thralls. No, whatever hunted here had power enough to keep members of the Horde, as low-ranking as they may have been, under their slavering control.

A thing that looked like a bastard cross between a human born of lava and a manticore leapt for her throat. She ducked under the slash while still in midair, her claws ripping it into shreds. Her foot caught the other beast and smashed it back and down, towards the river.

It screamed as it crashed through the surface, a doomed beast’s howling for mercy, and it did not come back up. The river bubbled, and Kelly felt the Daemon vanish, purified by the river and the magics inherent in it.

She landed back on the deck, absently wiping her claws on her jacket, before reaching out with her magic, and reaching deep. The river shone with old, old magic, as intrinsic and incorruptible as the sun, the stars, the sky itself.

It was Magic, and it simply _was_.

She had been very wrong – this was definitely _not_ an ambush spot, as no Daemon would be half so stupid as to get near a river that was practically pulsating with magic with every drop of water unless they had no choice in the matter. It was more likely that this was a place of last resort for animals or humans desperate to get away from the Daemons, and that many had been chased here.

Water was not near so efficient as fire in deterring and killing Daemons, but it was effective nonetheless. Adding magic to it simply made it moreso.

She turned to the bundle Gin had brought to them, and felt her mouth drop open. A tiny fox – bigger than she expected, but still rather small – with light purple fur blotted with blood sat there, Shere’s much larger body curling protectively around the animal. It had one tail, and a long, inquisitive muzzle.

“Su!” it chirped, struggling to free itself of Shere’s grip.

Shere made a grumbling noise and put a quelling paw on the fox, starting to lick at its wounds. The fox that Conis had – in canon – owned, made a noise that sounded a lot like a protest, chirping frantically at Kelly.

“Please!” Holy shit, _the fox was talking_.

Kelly blinked, snorted at her own sense of disbelief, (she was a human/snake hybrid walking around in a world where people broke every law of physics and nature on a regular basis, and _this_ is what made her blink?) and knelt beside the creature.

“Please, are you the Snake traveling with the Blue Sea pirates?” the fox chirped out hopefully.

In response, Kelly pulled back her sleeve and showed the fox her scales. Su jumped for glee, only stopping when Shere put a paw on her head to force her to be still.

“Ahhhh, let me go you stupid cat! I have a message from my Mistress! It’s _important_!”

“Calm down, little one, and give it to me. No need to further aggravate your injuries,” Kelly said mildly, stroking her hand over Su’s head.

“The message is in my collar, _Dominus Saa_!” The fox chirped, still obviously high as hell on adrenaline from the life-or-death run through the woods.

Kelly quickly removed the rolled up scroll stored in the collar’s pouch, carefully unfolding it. But before she opened it, she looked down at the fox, who was now submitting to Shere’s ministrations, watched over by an incredibly amused Gin.

Su was Conis’s fox in canon. Su was now a fucking Familiar – the Magic inside her was unmistakable in that regard.

…did that mean Conis was a goddamn Magus?

Christ, what the _fuck_.

She shook her head, and went back to opening the letter. It was made of a thin, if sturdy, parchment, and the lettering was careful and elegant. She began to read.

**_Dominus Saa_ ** _, in the name of the **Shandora lōkō** , I greet you!_

_I am Conis Allbright, first of her name, Lady Magus of my people, and I must come to you with a desperate plea._

Kelly rocked back on her heels. Well, that explained that. Conis – if this was truly her, and not some other Conis – was definitely a Magus, and one of some standing, as she recognized the greeting as one Kureha had taught her. Why was Conis with the Shandian people – if that was what that name meant?

“Ciel, what is it?” Nami asked, and Kelly flapped a hand at her for silence, before diving back into the words.

_Our people lived once in a tense, unsteady peace with the rest of Skypiea, a peace my Lady Mother was working hard to make into something real. She would have been successful, if Gan Fall had not been ousted from his seat by a man named Enel and his priests when I was eleven years old._

_Perhaps my Mother would have been able to best him on his own, even him and all of his cursed Priests, whom Enel had corrupted into less-than-human things, but Enel brought others with him, and a madness in his veins. Great monsters, the Daemons, those called the Sun Eaters by my kin, and they followed him willingly. They called him brother, and perhaps he was, for there was something inhuman in his eyes._

_Mother fled with me on the day the Eaters and their minions came, fled with me to the camps of her grandfather, the Shandians. We were welcomed, but our troubles were not over yet._

_Enel massacred anyone capable of standing against him, feeding anyone – including my father when he refused to let him know where my mother and I had gone – to the Daemons. The only thing that kept the Daemons from killing us all were the boundaries laid centuries ago by Magi on the temporary lands of the Shandians. My mother herself lost her life in maintaining that border, and now I am the only Magi left in all the islands._

_I do not know what to do. While we are capable of hunting, and growing food, it is an awful life, a half-life. I have seen so many of my people, of my friends, of those I love die in screaming agony, and all I have to show for it are my regrets and a bare handful of land._

_I ask – no, I beg of you, lend us aid. My goodsister once spoke of you when she first came to us. She said you were a Magus of unparalleled power and strength, and that you were her staunchest protector before you had been separated. She said you had saved her from a human who meant to rape her, and held her in your arms._

Kelly felt her blood freeze to ice in her veins. There was no way. There was no way-

_Before she was taken, she gave me this necklace, and told me to give it to you if ever you came, so you would know the truth of my words._

_Please,_ ya mitra _. I am losing hope, and so are my people._

_If at all possible, please help us fight back the plague. Help me set my people free, and regain our home._

The letter was signed with a curving C and A that mingled together, blurring a bit from the dried splotches that must have been tears. But that wasn’t what held Kelly’s attention.

A necklace lay nestled in a small pouch in the letter itself, and with shaking fingers she drew the chain out, and stared at it. It was silver, with half a moonstone carved in the shape of a sun dangling from a silver pendant at the middle of it.

She reached into her jacket front, and pulled the necklace she kept in a safe, inside pocket out into the open. This was a necklace much the same, but it had a moonstone carved to look just like a crescent moon dangling from it.

Very gently, she brought the two pendants, both moon and sun, together and pressed them together. They fit perfectly, of course. That had been why Kelly had bought them.

“C-Ciel? What is that?” Usopp asked tremulously, and gasped as she lifted her head.

Her cheeks felt very wet, and a distant part of her knew she was crying.

“A friend,” she said, her voice hoarse even to her own ears. “I bought this for a friend, when we were children. I told her she was the sun to my moon.”

Then she was elsewhere, remembering-

_…her eyes go soft and sweet, and she curls into Kelly’s side with casual intimacy._

_“The sun to your moon? My, I never knew you were such a romantic, Kelly,” Erin teases, and Kelly knows she is bright red, even as she giggles sheepishly. But she does not deny it…_

-and then she was back in her own skin, back in her own scales, and she dove for Su, plucking the fox up and shaking it witless.

“Where is she?!” Kelly knew well and good that her anger was spilling out of control, but she couldn’t stop it, and she didn’t care.

She wasn’t alone. Fucking god, _she wasn’t alone_.

Erin was here. Erin was here.

“Take me to your Mistress, right now!” she thundered, ignoring Shere’s attempts to get the bedraggled fox away from Kelly.

“Ciel, for god’s sake, stop! You’re hurting it!” Nami tried to pry at Kelly’s arms, but that did nothing.

What did more was the conscious seeping of her magic past Kelly’s skin. It soothed the desperate thing wailing in Kelly’s chest, the thing she had thought properly shut away when she had first escaped the castles as a…well, not as a child, but when she’d had a child’s body for the second time.

Her own magic responded, tangling and twisting with Nami’s, and Kellyfelt her anger and fear leeching away.

“Ciel, what is it?” Nami asked, and a frission of tension fell away from the group.

“A friend of mine. One I have not seen in years…she’s here. Here on Skypiea.”

Kelly took a deep breath, hauling back the tears with all her strength.

“And I’m going to go find her.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **TRANSLATIONS AND FOOTNOTES**
> 
>  
> 
> **nānu** – Shandian Language; endearment: translates to ‘little one’  
>  **Dominus Saa** – Sermo; title: best translates to ‘Lord Snake’ in the Common Tongue  
>  **Shandora lōkō** – Shandian language; name: this is the name used by people of Shandora (ie, the Shandians of canon) to denote their origin. It means ‘People of Shandora’.  
>  **Ya mitra** – Shandian language; phrase: ‘beloved friend’, used by those when speaking with someone who is an ally, but not as close as a brother or sister. Denotes some formality.
> 
> * * *
> 
> *Kelly isn’t aware of varying ranks within the three categories of the hierarchy of Daemons, and it will be some time before she is. But for your own information, I’ve decided to show you all the hierarchy. Later, when more story is revealed, I will do the same for the Magi.
> 
> Of the **Horde** , there are three distinct groups (from weakest to most powerful):  
> • _The Hungry_ \- (Called Huklā in Tējavī.) These are the most commonly found in the Blue Seas.  
>  • _Nameless Horrors_ \- (Añāe ban in Tējavī.) Some of these can be found in the Blue Seas.  
>  • _Voracious Devourers_ \- (Khāa khā) Few have been seen in the Blue Seas.  
>  ***  
> Of the **Servants** , there are three more groups:  
> • _Deep Ones_ – (Kōa viavan) Their members often fall into both the categories of Horde and Servants. Only one has ever been seen in the Blue Seas, and was thought killed by Gold Roger.  
>  • _Golden Toothed_ – (Siēr d’tēi) Found in the first half of the Grand Line. Not so interested in human flesh as their kin, but infatuated with gold and jewels.  
>  • _Black Tongued_ – (Kā jabhae) They are the huntsmen and hounds masters of the Daemons, adept at creating lesser Thralls. The Daemons seen so far in Skypiea, and the one Usopp and Chopper killed, are among their numbers.  
>  ***  
> Of the **Highborn** , there are four:  
> • _Shadowstalkers_ – (Val ekrāvi) Like the Deep Ones, they inhabit a vague space between the ranks, and can be found as both Highborn and Servants. Ladon and Chimera, the Daemons Ace and Kelly fought in Arabasta, both belong to the Shadowstalkers.  
>  • _Sun Eaters_ – (Sūryai krā) The highest rank found in the first half of the Grand Line. Except for a few, most of their kind live in the New World, or in their own home plane. These are the Daemons that helped Enel conquer Skypiea.  
>  • _Princes of the Dark_ – (Gaada ni iē) The highest rank to willingly live in the human realms, and all who do are found in the New World.  
>  • _Kings of the Blood_ – (Rakt ni rē) The rulers of the Daemons, all of whom live on their own home plane, leaving only to hunt occasionally, or to find mates or playtoys. All other, lesser Daemons must obey without question the orders of the Kings.
> 
> Pleasant, aren’t they?


	29. The Fire of Shandia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kelly meets with the Magus of the Shandian tribe.

* * *

Su was warm and trusting, tucked inside her jacket, but Kelly kept one hand cupped underneath the fox just in case, to make sure that she didn’t fall out as the Magus streaked through the trees.

If what she remembered was true, the Merry Go would dock at the…Sacrifice Altar, or something? Chopper would have a fight against someone that he couldn’t win against, and he would call Gan Fall with the whistle.

But all of the Straw Hats were there and present, so she doubted just Chopper would be left to deal with whatever threats came their way, and Gan Fall would also fail…right? Would Gan Fall even be there?

Fucking hell, she had to write down everything she still remembered about the series the moment she got a chance to do so. She was forgetting stuff, _important_ stuff, and that could easily cost her, her life.

Even though things had changed, keeping track of the basis from which they had changed could only be to her benefit.

Shere and Gin felt restless, prowling in the back of her head, as they monitored the jungle around the river. They told her of few – if any - animals lingering in the river and woods, even the mutated ones favored by the Daemons. She opened her connection to them further, allowing them to draw more of her own magic into their bodies. It both soothed them and comforted her, as they would have plenty of protection for themselves in case any Daemons or Thralls did come along.

With them, the Straw Hats would be safe enough while she went to get answers. Nami wasn’t near strong enough for Daemons to hunt, and none of the others were Magi.

As Kelly was the strongest Magi on the ship, it was probably safest for the pirates to have Kelly elsewhere.

And with the spells she had long since woven into the fabric of the ship would protect it from fire damage, so Chopper (or whoever stayed on the ship) wouldn’t have to deal with that particular annoyance.

She shook off the niggling fears in her head, and concentrated on getting to the Shandian encampment.

If things were as they happened, maybe she would be fortunate enough to get to the tribe’s home after Wiper had left, going on the attack of Enel’s Shrine.

But what of the Daemons? Surely they wouldn’t be distracted? And _surely_ the warriors knew well enough to leave be if Daemons were out and about…

Kelly grimaced as she remembered Conis’s letter, speaking of her fear of any rash action that Wiper may take in his restlessness. She knew many things had changed as a result of Magi and Daemons being, well, a thing, but she doubted very much that Wiper himself had changed.

He’d always been a prideful bastard.

Kelly burst through the trees, landing soundlessly on the sea. The feeling of the clouds below her gave her an idea, and she stopped.

Then she cackled.

_Why not?_

She channeled magic in a slow, steady stream to her feet, sweat dribbling down her face from the effort. Then, very cautiously, she began to move her feet in broad, open strokes, like she was skating across an ice rink.

Then she herself was moving, zooming across the cloud-sea with ease.

Kelly laughed and laughed and laughed, barely able to keep her balance as she did. It was for some time she traveled, Su’s presence tucked against her chest.

“Ah!” Then the fox poked her head out of Kelly’s jacket, nearly overbalancing her.

“Shit, fuck, _god damn it_ Su,” Kelly cursed, her arms flapping frantically before she caught herself and kept going. “What is it?”

“My home!” she chirped, and Kelly looked up.

Her first impression of the Shandian encampment was one of age. It should be impossible, that a bunch of tipis and cloth homes set on the cloud-sea could ever give across the impression of age and oldness, but it did. She could see, in the distance, an immense vine that twisted far up into the sky, and vaguely remembered it as the one Luffy would use to get at Enel, during their fight.

 _Might_ use would be more accurate. She didn’t know if Luffy would even fight Enel now.

 _I’ll find Erin, and I’ll get back to the Straw Hats_ , Kelly told herself. _And then we’re getting the fuck out of Skypiea, back to the Blue Sea. I don’t care what I have to do in order to ensure that. We’ll be safer there._

A tiny voice wondered what would happen to Conis and the Shandians if they did that, but Kelly thrust that voice aside.

As she came closer, she could see five immense pillars sprouting at the outside of the camp. She could feel the magic that danced from them, welcoming her even as they warned all foes who might have tried to get past that their death would not be kind.

No, they weren’t mere pillars, but _totems_ , she realized, drawing nearer to them.

They weren’t like the totems she remembered from school, from the childhood stories her great-grandmother told her and Amb- _Nee-chan_ when they were both children. These had far different animals, including one that resembled the South Bird they had brought from the Blue Sea.

Kelly stopped right before the barrier the totems made around the camp. Something told her to wait.

She could have easily brushed past the barrier, easily done so – her Magic was far stronger, far deeper and far brighter than the seals writ onto the totems. But she did not.

To do so, something whispered inside her - something that sounded as Nephele had when they had spoken at her altar – would be sacrilege and insult of the highest order.

So she waited, and was soon rewarded by the sight of a young Shandian woman, approaching from the near-silent camp.

The woman was a head and half shorter than Kelly, her eyes bright and clear, her blonde hair pulled back and braided in the same manner as Kelly remembered Wiper’s being. She wore practical clothes – an undyed tunic and breeches, woven with magic symbols – and her chin was a proud arch.

And her wings…

They were white, curling at her shoulder, flecked with brown like a falcon’s.

She was so strange, so incredibly _different_ from the girl Kelly had known from canon that the Magus couldn’t help but marvel at it. Kelly thought back to the words Conis had written in the letter tucked against Kelly’s chest beside Su, and realized that she should have expected it.

A Conis without her father or mother, a Conis who had fled the wrath of Enel, a Conis who had lived for almost _ten years_ among the people of Shandia, a Conis who was a Magus, and a Magus of some power-

There was no way this Conis could have ever been like the one she had known of.

But then she caught sight of the faint trembling in Conis’s clenched hands, and the almost-glassy look to her eyes, and something in her softened. There was still something of the soft, angel-like girl who had put her life on the line to warn Luffy, Sanji, and Usopp of Enel’s trap.

The words came to her mouth without prompting, as did the bow.

She crossed her arms over her heart, the bow one Magus makes to another on that Magus’s land, and she spoke with quiet confidence.

“My greetings, _bahan dil_ ,” Kelly said.

When she raised her head again, the tension in Conis’s proud shoulders had drained away.

* * *

The Snake was enormous.

It was strange, to have such a creature-

No, that was ill of her, to think so of someone who had come for no other reason than loyalty.

It was strange to have such a tall _man_ at her side as this Ciel Russo was.

Stranger still to have a Magus of such power that the air around him warped to touch him. She wondered, her hand tucked into the crook of his arm like some noble lady from a story, if he even realized it.

It made her feel content and safe in a way she had not realized she missed since her mother had died. His magic was a potent thing, living and real, and the totems shone all the brighter when they walked past them.

If Conis did not feel so relieved by his presence, she might have felt jealous. Here was a proper Magus, here was someone who would have been a proper protector for her- _Wiper’s_ peoples.

“How did she die?” There was something so quiet in her companion’s voice, something anguished, and she was reminded of how Ciel had first looked, when he had come searching for his Erin.

Kamakiri and Laki would have been less than pleased by the intimacy in his speech, but Conis did not care.

The words failed her as she tried to find them, and Conis did not look at him.

Ciel’s voice was ragged in his grief. “Was it quick, at least?”

She looked at the ground, and felt the immense muscles in her brother Magus’s arm tense, though his grip on her hand remained carefully gentle. And she remembered-

_…“RUN!”_

_Erin’s scream is a high-pitched sound of absolute and unflinching terror, and Conis drops the herbs she had been gathering from the small garden on their hidden section of the precious Vearth._

_There is a sound like baying hounds, and Conis’s heart stops in her chest._

_No, this shouldn’t be. The Daemons only hunted in this area in the darkest of nights, not in broad daylight, with the sun right overhead-_

_Erin’s hand scrabbles at her arm, grasping it in an iron grip, while Conis grabs for the bag of herbs they had gathered. Herbs that would keep their people in medicine for years to come._

_They run together, just as the first screech reaches Conis’s ears. Beasts burst from the woods, commanded by ranks of the huntsmasters. They exude a wave of fear-stench before them, and Conis’s amulets – the ones designed to protect her from just this – shatter instantly. There have never been so many out on a hunt._

_Erin’s hand is what keeps her sane, keeps her from dropping to her knees with the instinctual prey-terror. Erin’s hand is warm and strong, and Conis knows that before she came to the tribe, she had been hunted for years._

_They burst through the trees, and their skates whirl into brightness. They fly across the cloud-sea desperately, Su at her heels, Jyana flying alongside her Mistress. Were the fear any less, they could have taken to the skies, but Erin’s wing is sore from the sprain she suffered earlier, and Conis knows she does not have the peace of mind needed to fly._

_Jyana shrieks, and they can hear movement at the encampment._

_If they can get past the wards, bring them to full life, they will be safe. They can do it together so easily, Erin being so strong, and both of them children of Air, they can do it-_

_Another screech, multiplied times a thousand, and Conis looks back against her own will._

_Oh, gods-_

_Close to a hundred beasts, twisted and warped into only the slightest approximation of hunting dogs, are barreling towards them. Behind them are close to a dozen hulking humanoids, who keep close pace with their slavering mutts._

_One of them, a great titan with flayed lips and straggly hair, shrieks when he sees them, a sound taken up by his companions and echoed eerily by the mutts._

_Shouts ahead, and Conis turns her head back to the barrier before them. She can see the vague shapes of her tribe waiting them, calling out encouragement and fearful shouts of worry._

_Then she-_

_She drops her bag._

_The herbs they spent so long trying to cultivate, the herbs that would help Naabhak breath right again, the ones that would calm Chaaya during her fits, that would help new mothers and young children-_

_Conis yanks out of Erin’s grip, and grabs for it._

_“_ Mierda _, Conis,_ no _-”_

_Erin’s hand reattaches to her arm, and then she’s being dragged along, while she tries to keep one hand on the precious herbs._

_They’re only meters away from the wards, which have blazed into full light at the sensing of the Daemons so near. Shandia’s people – warriors and normal folk alike – gather at the ethereal barrier, their faces a study of emotions from shock to despairing terror. Even the warriors are not unaffected._

_Wiper is there as well, his hands fisted on the dome of the barrier, and his eyes are on hers._

_He cannot get through the barrier – none save a Magi can. But she focuses on him, focuses and reaches out-_

_Erin halts so suddenly that Conis is thrown forward, crashing into the ground. There’s a gagging sound, and the smell of blood is bitter on the air._

_Conis turns while still on the ground, turns and-_

_Erin’s golden-brown face is bloodless, and her hands are reaching with disbelief to the-_

_“No, no, no, no nononononononononono-” Conis staggers up as Erin collapses to her knees, the spear sticking out through her belly._

_There are screams now, from the people inside the encampment._

_Erin smiles a bloody smile as Conis flutters her hands over the bloody wound, trying to send her Magic out and not knowing where._

_“R…run,” her sister in magic, her sister in all but blood wheezes._

_“No, I won’t leave you, I refuse-”_

_The spear’s head opens, and Erin screams. It’s a hook like the ones the fishermen use to catch the sky-fish, with a rope attached to the end of the spear._

_The arms of the spearhead pull back, and Conis dives around Erin’s body. She calls winds, she calls fire, and she calls the gods to strike the metal attached to the end of the spear, the metal rope held by a monster, with Jyana diving down to strike with razor-sharp beak and claws at the same time._

_She brings a hand of light down with a crash on the metal, but it does not even budge. Does not even_ tremble _. She brings down another hand, then another, all while the stinking Daemons and their hunting dogs grow closer._

_Erin reaches for her with bloody hands, and Conis takes them in her own. There’s poison on the spear, Conis realizes it when she sees the black lines snaking up Erin’s face. Poison that takes almost all of Erin’s Magic to combat._

_“Run,” Erin pleads with her. “And tell…tell Kama and Laki…tell them I’m sorr-”_

_Erin clamps her hands on Conis’s shoulders, gagging as she’s pulled back, digging her feet into the soil._

_Magic shudders out, and Erin hisses a spell of compulsion that snaps into place around Conis’s shoulder like an iron vice. Jyana is still screaming, still pecking furiously as the spear and the metal._

_“Tell them I lov-”_

_There’s a snap, and Erin is yanked backwards, pulled screaming through the air._

_Conis is screaming as well, screaming even as the compulsion pulls her off her knees and yanks her towards the barrier. She is still wailing even when the compulsion drops the moment she’s behind the dome, countless hands reaching for her._

_Conis remembers how her mother had looked, when she had gone outside of the barrier, to repair a fracturing totem during the raid years ago. She remembers the screams as the things ate her mother, and how Conis had been held down, prevented from going to her._

_Now she is helpless again._

_Conis whirls, and slams into the barrier, just as Erin disappears in the mob of monsters._

_“NO!"  
_

_She beats her fists on the Magic that refuses to let her through until they are bloody and bruised. Her own magic smashes out against the barrier, a barrier that has stood for centuries, warping the air around her until she is alone in a circle of her own grief._

_The Daemons leave._

_And there is no sign of Erin or Jyana. The magic that so often twined with hers – it is gone._

_Conis can barely see for the tears, but she does see the bag on the ground, with the herbs spilling from it. The herbs she traded for her sister’s life. First her father, then her mother, now her sister._

_Her knees give way, and someone is keening, an awful sound that aches of grieving._

_It takes a long time before she realizes that the one making that noise is her…-_

“No,” Conis said, and Ciel made a moaning noise that was quickly stifled.

“Enel’s doing?”

Conis breathed in deep, remembering the laugh that had echoed all over the island, the day after Erin had died.

“Yes,” she said.

“What do you need me to do?” the jade-eyed Snakeman asked, his voice hard but cracking at the edges.

“What about the pirates you’re traveling with?” Conis replied, remembering them suddenly, the weak pirates who had fallen so quickly before Wiper. “Won’t they be rather annoyed?”

Pirates only cared for gold and wealth and whatever satisfied them, after all.

Ciel bit his lip, then shook his head. “No…No, they wouldn’t. They’d understand quite well.” The way he said that was rueful, almost amused.

“Come with me, I require maps to show you everything.”

The Snakeman followed her closely, looming at her shoulder like a bodyguard as they passed through the near-silent camp.

“Where are your people?” he asked, looking around.

“Most are probably abed, or gathering food. The warriors are meeting now, probably to do something stupid.”

“I thought the clouds weren’t capable of bearing crops?”

Conis looked up at him. “How do you know that?”

It was true, after all. Magic did not thrive on the clouds and _in_ the clouds like it did with the Vearth, and anything beyond small patches and gardens died in short measure. Her and her mother’s ancestors, and the first Magus of the tribes, Aegle, had laid the foundation for that, and through many a raid had their people survived on the meagre gatherings from their gardens. But great crops, like the ones kept by mainlander families who had access to the Vearth, were not possible to maintain.

But how did this Blue Sea Dweller know of it?

He shrugged. “It was easy enough to find out. Magic does not hold here so like it does down below.”

“You’re right,” Conis says, ducking under the flap of her tent.

“It holds in the water up here, though,” Ciel said, sounding pleased and speculative.

Conis wondered then if Ciel had ever had anyone to speak so about Magic so frankly with.

She doubted he would have been able to do so with the pirates, who were all human. They were not like the Shandians, who revered Magi with as much wonder as Calgara had once done for his adopted daughter Aegle, who had protected the tribe for years and years before dying to save Calgara’s son.

The Shandians owed their lives to Magi and to Magic, as the totems erected by Aegle centuries before had been protection when they’d lost their lands and then again when the Daemons had come. They _revered_ Magic and those who could use it. She knew most humans – like the Skypieans and the Birkans who had come with Enel were, and surely the Blue Sea Dwellers too – were not like that.

And even the Shandians did not and _could_ _not_ understand Magic as Magi did. Conis had not had anyone so willing to discuss the intricacies of what Magic could do for some time, ever since Erin had…

…in any case, having someone with her who understood and enjoyed it felt quite wonderful.

“It’s where we get most of our food,” Conis said. “The water-ocean that connects a part to our camp hosts a lot of water-plants, and a great deal many fish. The totems Aegle constructed also keep the fish and plants free of the Daemons.”

She offered Ciel a place before her small writing desk, a gift from her mother, but Ciel was staring at her strangely.

“Is there something wrong?” Conis asked, worried.

“Did you say Aegle?”

Conis blinked. “Yes? Is that a problem?”

“No, no, not at all,” Ciel said, and he _smiled_.

The breath in Conis’s lungs deserted her at the way it changed his face, made it soft and warm, and unbelievably handsome.

His eyes were a deep jade color, like the stones Mama had worn around her neck until the day she had died. His lips, even with the scar that cut almost from the bottom of his nose through the right side of his mouth to his jaw, were full and seemed all the warmer for the smile.

She wondered how she had never noticed the way his muscles strained against his jacket, how big his arms were folded against his chest, how his scales gleamed-

Conis looked away, blushing furiously. In all her years, she had never even thought of a man beyond Wiper in such a way. She barely even _knew_ Ciel, beyond their bond of Magic.

Though there were many who would say that was more than enough.

“I was at the grave of Montblanc Norland and Nephele, before I came here,” Ciel said, and what breath Conis had managed to regain promptly deserted her again.

She whirled. “You…their grave?” she asked, her heart in her throat.

_Her ancestors._

Though _Nephele_ was more her ancestor than Norland was, but that didn’t matter. Her ancestor had been Nephele’s loyal daughter, the woman who had died saving the Shandians. She had always longed to know more about what had become of them.

Wiper would give so much to hear this, she thought, and decided she would keep the words in her heart to tell him later.

Ciel reached into his jacket, and pulled out two fans.

“I was told to bring these to you, to bring these to Aegle’s daughter. I think she was talking about you,” Ciel said, handing them over.

Conis took them with shaking hands. They were magnificent things, the frame and the blades crafted from finely honed kairōseki, while the cloth stretched over the frame was something that looked like silk, but sang of deep magic and felt harder than steel.

“You, I, this is…” Words failed her as she stared down at the weapons Nephele had worn at her hip the day she had stepped foot on their lands centuries ago.

“Nephele told me you should have it,” Ciel said.

“Montblanc Nephele is dead,” Conis said, her voice tremulous. The weapons felt just a hair shy of made for her, fitting to her hands almost perfectly.

Ciel shrugged. “Yeah, but we’re _Magi_ , and she had business left in this world. I’ve heard of _humans_ lingering to try and finish what they left behind, who says Magi can’t as well?”

“She said…she said these are for me?”

To hold Nephele’s own weapons in her hands…goddesses, was there any greater honor?

 _Even Wiper would acknowledge me, with these,_ she thought, and was immediately ashamed by her selfishness.

Ciel nodded. “Not in so many words, but I understand what she means now. You’re Aegle’s daughter, sure enough, and no one with a thought in their head could deny that.”

Conis’s mouth trembled, and her fellow Magus looked away, allowing her time to compose herself.

“So, _bahan dil_ ,” Ciel said after a time, and when she looked back at him he grinned, showing all of his teeth. “How are we going to oust the Daemons from your lands?”

“I have maps, recent ones showing the lay of the land,” Conis said, drawing the precious maps from her storage box near the desk. “They even hold the location of our encampment, though all others in the sky do not.”

Ciel whistled and sat across from her. “Enel would kill to have these,” he said, peering over the papers.

“He has,” Conis said flatly, and Ciel winced.

“My apologies for my tactlessness. Go on?”

Conis rubbed her hands over the map. The drawn island was in the shape of a slightly crooked half-moon circle, with places marked out by drawings and careful words.

“We are currently located here, near the ocean,” she said, pointing to the far left of the open half-moon. “The land of our ancestors, the Upper Yard as Skypieans now call it, it is to the north of here.”

She pointed to a large space separated from the rest of the map by depictions of immense trees.

“Enel lives near the top of the Great Vine, in the east section of the Yard. The Daemons mostly live in the immediate east of that, they are free to roam wherever they wish through the entire island barring Gan Fall’s home and our encampment. The mainlanders live mostly on Angel Island, but there are farms and more homes to the south. There are five pillars constructed by evil spells, they give the Daemons the power to combat us. They also keep the Daemons alive, even against the Magic inherent in the Upper Yard.”

“They wander wherever they wish?” Ciel sounded horrified.

“Enel must keep them happy, after all.”

“…are you telling me he has a _Contract_ with them? And what type of Daemons are they? I nearly got killed because of that damn fear-pheromone they give out.”

The smaller Magus raised an eyebrow. “Weren’t you taught the spells of protection as a child? Even my mother knew to teach me those, and we had no tribe of Magi to learn from.”

Ciel grimaced. “I didn’t…ah, I didn’t grow up with a tribe. My parents were human, and I…well, I didn’t really have a lot of time to learn from Magi until several months ago, when I met a dragon-Magi, and I didn’t even really have a lot of time to learn from her. My Familiar, Gin, taught me most of what I know, along with books and trial and error.”

“…You’re joking.”

The Snake shrugged, blushing a little in embarrassment. “Spent close to a decade running for my life from Daemons after I…ah, after I took ‘a wrong turn on the road of life’, so to speak. Didn’t really leave a lot of time for learning basic stuff, or even figuring out what that basic stuff was.”

Conis kept her mouth shut on what she wanted to say, as she realized that _but how in the name of the goddess have you survived this long without a tribe or a proper teacher_ probably would not go over very well. Even between Magi, there were lines in the sand, and Conis recognized that inquiring further into Ciel’s past would be crossing a rather large one.

So instead, she slipped off one of the amulets wrapped around her neck and handed it over.

“I will teach you some more appropriate and long-lasting spells that you can use from now on, once we have decided what to do. They will also work well with those pirates you travel with. But for now, take this, and keep it with you at all times. It may not completely eradicate the fear-stench, but it alleviates it enough.” Conis paused, and rubbed her hands together. “And if we succeed, I will take it upon myself to teach you the little tricks that my mother taught me."

Her fellow Magus looked at the flat, kairōseki pendant for a long, long time, before he slipped the silver necklace over his head, and tucked it inside his jacket.

“Ah, do you…do you know what type of D-Daemons they are? And does Enel have a Contract with them?” If Ciel’s voice cracked a little, Conis wouldn’t mention it.

“I know Daemons have a hierarchy among them, but I don’t know specific names. They have their servants, the slightly higher-ranked ones than that, and then the Highborn, who are rarely seen, if at all. The huntsmasters have that fear-stench that can cripple us if we’re not careful.”

“And his Contract?”

“No, he doesn’t quite have a Contract, from what I’ve learned. They listen to him too well, obey him too well than they would if he merely had a Contract with them. I’ve heard Gan Fall speak of his own suspicions and I have no reason not to agree with him.”

“What does the Knight of the Sky think? And for that matter, Conis, why does he have Magi amulets?”

Conis blinked. “Oh, you noticed those? They were made by my mother.”

“Your mother?”

“He prostrated himself before her, the day after the Lottery began. He begged for her to give him and Pierre some way of fighting back against the Daemons, and to maybe rescue any of the mainlanders who found themselves on the wrong end of a Daemon. He wanted a way to atone, and so Mama made sure he had it. In return, the two of them would act as our scout and spy. Mama saw no reason to risk any of our people more than we already had to do,” Conis said, and Ciel sat back.

“That’s…that’s absolutely fucking fascinating, holy shit…wait, the Lottery? What’s that?”

Conis sat back, and looked at her fellow Magus, feeling something of a gap spreading between them. It seemed almost alien that he _didn’t_ know, that he _couldn’t_ know of something that had been a part of her life for so long.

“The Lottery is how Enel keeps the ‘peace’, and keeps people from wanting to rebel. If the farms are not drawing an adequate number of food to feed the lower-ranked Daemons, then his Priests draw numbers and sacrifice that amount people from Angel Island to the Daemons. And everyone is required to watch,” Conis said, her voice very calm.

The waters would turn red, and the screams of the doomed people would be heard for miles around. Even Wiper, who hated mainlanders, would light incense and say a prayer on those days.

“It is lucky for everyone that the human-farms are capable of feeding the rabble on most days, and the higher-ranked Daemons have their own food, though what it is I don’t want to know.”

Ciel looked as though he was in shock.

“As for what Gan Fall believes…He thinks Enel is descended from their Kings. He thinks Enel consumed the blood of his own mother after he was born, that he killed hundreds on his native island with others like himself, those Priests of his, that he brought a half dozen Magi bound by trickery to the Daemons, and was accepted among the Daemons for his cruelty. He thinks that is the reason why Enel is so strong in his Devil Fruit, why only pure kairōseki honed with magic can make him falter,” Conis said quietly.

She believed the old man, after all. He had been vigilant in his protection of the Sky, and in his reports to her, despite Wiper's mistrust of him.

And after all, the only reason the other Magi of the sky would not have come to oust Enel and his Daemons would be if they…well. If they were dead.

The room was very quiet for several long minutes, before Ciel breathed slowly and looked up.

“A friend of mine taught me that Daemons and humans were… _compatible_. Enel – his mother was human, right?”

Conis nodded. “So I believe.”

“She taught me that Daemons preferred to get children on Magi the most, as they have the most potential to become-to become corrupted. But they can get children on humans as well, she said, and that it was our duty as Magi if we ever found such a child born of a human, that we should kill it. For _mercy_ , she said. Humans are not as capable of withstanding the lure of bad blood, she said. I told myself I would never do so. The faults of the sire are not the blame of the child,” Ciel whispered.

Conis watched him, watched the scales on his throat as he swallowed hard.

“But I wonder to myself what I would have done, if I had known that some human carried the spawn that would unleash death among thousands, would enslave still more, and would willingly consort with those who raped his mother in his quest for power. I wonder what I would have done, if I looked upon the babe and knew he would one day have his monstrous kin hunt down and kill a girl I had loved.”

Ciel let out a long, hateful laugh, before rubbing a hand down his face.

“Am I a monster, Conis? Am I a monster for wondering if I would have crushed the little bastard in between my hands, and felt nothing?”

Conis reached across the table, and took his hands in hers.

“You are not a monster,” she said, smiling wryly. “Because I have dreamed of such things as well. Wiper would give _anything_ to have that opportunity before his hands, and he is more human than Enel could ever be. Even Gan Fall has thought of it, though he would not have me know that. You are not a monster for wanting one dead.”

Ciel sighed, and his fingers tightened around Conis’s. “I couldn’t kill a child,” he said, his voice only a little unsure. “…But I would kill a man whose choices are his own.”

“Then it is a _man_ we will kill, such that Enel could ever be called a man,” Conis promised, glad to see his confidence again.

Hope was such a strange thing in her heart, Conis thought, as they put their heads together and began to think of the plan that would turn Enel’s pillars into their own weapon.

“I can do it,” Ciel said, his voice calm and confident, peering over the sigils that Gan Fall had transcribed onto separate papers.

“The Tower will be a problem,” Conis pointed out, touching the small picture drawn near Enel’s shrine. “It is where the Handmaidens of Enel are rumored to live, and we know so little about it and about them. We could easily be walking into a trap. I only have this because Gan Fall nearly risked his life to map it.”

“Then I will take it apart, and we will never have to step a foot inside.”

“Not even you are that strong-” Conis said, only to stop as Magic blazed, as Magic _roared_ , as it sang and wailed in a song with no words.

It was like kneeling before the heart of the sun, with Ciel sitting there, his eyes vicious.

“I have too long been hampered by my own fears, my own worries,” he said. “Enel and all his Daemons have a debt to pay. It seems as if we are in the right place to make sure they do.”

Hope was such a dangerous, strange thing to hold, and Conis had always grasped it with light fingers. It could so easily fly away from her.

But it felt more real now, more attainable.

“While the Daemons are feasting, and the warriors battle Enel’s Priests, we will destroy the pillars,” Ciel said, and in his voice was a supreme confidence.

_I will accept nothing else than to make the impossible, possible._

Ciel grinned at her, hard and angry, and she thought that hope was not so dangerous a thing after all, when it had returned one of her own to her.

* * *

“He will not let us hunt the pirates,” said one of the women sitting in the Tower.

“He says he will bring their bodies and prisoners to us, that his _Priests_ must have work to do, must have _hunts_ of their own,” her sister commented. “Or else they get _restless_.”

“Our little cousin is so caring of his Priests,” sniffed another.

The woman on the dais stirred only slightly, her body exhausted and bruised. She had been drained of blood, several chunks of her flesh missing and healing very slowly, but she was still alive.

_She was still alive, and Enel’s head on a pike waited her._

The mantra that had kept her alive for the years since she had come to this wretched place, used as a food source for the greatest of the Daemons that had come with Enel, the leaders of the Daemons. It would keep her alive for years longer, if it still was necessary.

_I will kill them all, one day. Even if it means my life, I will kill them all._

Erin Torres kept her eyes closed, feigning the harsh, pained breathing that came with a Magi’s healing sleep until true sleep really did come to her.

She dreamed of the human girl-child who had bowed to her as though she were Queen, and the feel of Jyana’s feathers under her fingers.

And she dreamed also of blue scales, and a pirate’s flag with a straw hat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **TRANSLATIONS & FOOTNOTES**
> 
> **bahan dil** – _Sermo_ ; means “sister of the heart”. A very respectful term. Is not connotative of a familial relationship, but rather a relationship forged by the bonds of Magic.


	30. Daughter of the Sky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The fight for Skypiea is reaching its peak, as Kelly and Conis set in motion their plan to defeat Enel.

* * *

Exhaustion tugged at Kelly’s limbs as she leapt through the trees. There was fear as well, and worry sharp and tight in her lungs.

_I should have stopped Conis. I should have stopped Conis. I should have gone instead._

If her fellow Magus got killed, then Kelly would never forgive herself.

But how could she have done anything to stop her?

They had needed a distraction to keep Enel from realizing what they were doing, and who better? Conis could pass off her being there to fight Enel like the other Shandians – anger and a need for revenge that made her impulsive. The man _had_ killed her mother after all.

And Conis had nearly gotten killed already, fighting through the Daemons and humans who had guarded the first three pillars. Kelly was much stronger, and much more capable of surviving the fights with enough Magic to twist the Pillars to her own use.

So Conis had gone to draw Enel to her. With Enel’s attention – and, hopefully, that of his Daemons as well – Kelly would be free to turn them all to ash.

 _I hope she can hold on until then_ , Kelly thought, skidding to a halt before the immense construction that faced the sea, on the far northwest side of the Upper Yard. _Of course she could, she’s a daughter of Aegle, for fuck’s sake._

Kelly pushed aside her worries. Conis would be fine, if Kelly laid her trust in her.

 _Been too damn long since I did that_ , she thought wryly.

There were no guards here, because no one would have expected an attack on a Pillar so close to Enel’s undisputed domain.

The last of the pillars would be in the very heart of Enel’s domain, by the Giant Jack and the Tower.

Kelly breathed in, and breathed out, before setting her hands on the white stone.

From afar, the pillar would have looked like something one might have expected to see in the homes of royalty – all marble, elegantly carved, flickering with precious stones embedded in certain places. It was opulent and grand and expensive-looking as all hell.

It was also the foulest thing Kelly had ever felt in her life, as foul as the others had been.

Something _evil_ , Magic corrupted and fouled by unspeakable acts, Magic twisted and tortured, lived in the whirls and supposedly gentle signs that in a true Magus’s hands, would have bespoken protection and purity.

Kelly _breathed_ , in and out, in and out.

Her Magic furled out, like the way the sea snake had arisen from the depths back on the Blue Sea. It rose and rose and rose, and spread through her hands.

The magic in the pillar was evil and strong, but it was _nothing_ compared to hers.

She reached out with it, and found the foul husk that was its core, found it and bore down with all her strength. She sent her magic to the magic within and drew the poison away, healing the wounds it left behind.

Under her fingers, as she drew more and more of the poison and rot into her own body, until the white stone became the sturdy black of obsidian.

Obsidian was the stone of change, of protection and strength, of permanence and tenacity.

Was there any better rock with which to do this?

Kelly stumbled back only when she was sure all of the rot had gone, and fell to her knees, vomiting black bile and sickly red blood. She heaved and heaved, her magic forcing all of the toxins out of her as quickly as it could, until her belly was past empty and her mouth tasted unspeakably foul.

When she was certain her legs would not give out, she stood, and pulled her flask from her jacket. The sharp sting of rum chased the foulness away, and she spat before she drained the rest.

“Fucking Christ, that’s a bitch and a half,” she said with a shudder.

( _Mistress_.)

_Gin? What is it?_

( _I have found the Daemons_ )

 _What? Where?_ Kelly pushed herself to move faster, heading for the last pillar. After this, the island would be free of Daemons, and would hopefully always be free of them. _And I thought I told you to stay with the Straw Hats!_

( _I went with Zoro to the ruins after they all were separated. We were attacked by Thralls, and are attempting to reunite. Shere remains with Nami and a Shandian girl-child, along with Gan Fall, or so she tells me_.)

_What are the Daemons doing? And, I swear, if you’ve put yourself in danger, Gin-_

( _Not at all. I’ve used Far-Sight, a gift from my old master)_ Gin said placidly. _(I’m not stupid enough to get that close, Mistress_ )

_Far Sight?_

( _Allows me to see even further than a cat’s eyes will allow. It’s most useful. In any case, from what I can tell, all the Daemons that are capable of being hosted on Skypiea must be here, but…_ )

_But what?_

( _I only see and sense lesser ranked ones, and with so many here there_ must _be some of the Highborn to keep them under control_.)

The last pillar was centered at the very northern part of Skypiea, near a compound that encircled a large, imposing tower made of the same ugly white marble as the pillars.

Kelly snuck past it, keeping to the trees and forest to hide her presence as she thought about what Gin had said.

 _They must be elsewhere, then_.

It was not a pleasant thought. Could Enel have kept the Highborn near him? No human, Logia Devil Fruit or not, would be quite so fucking stupid-but then again, if what Conis had said was true, Enel _wasn’t_ human. Not entirely.

She walked towards her destination, magic curling, ready and anxious inside her. The last pillar was unguarded, but something told Kelly to keep a careful eye out.

 _It can’t be this easy_ , she thought, and approached the rancid thing.

A voice stopped Kelly in her tracks before she could place her hands on the marble.

“Magus, you’ve gone and put yourself somewhere you shouldn’t be.”

_I knew it._

Kelly swallowed hard, and turned to face the woman – _women_ – emerging from the trees. Three of them, two flanking the tallest, all of them tasting of dead things and rotting flowers to her senses.

The one in the middle, the one with golden hair and a wide-welcoming smile - she was the leader. She was heavily curved, dressed in silks that gleamed in a multitude of colors, her feet bare, her cleavage expansive.

 _To tempt and to taunt_ , Kelly thought, remembering Kureha’s words of warning. She looked at the woman’s ears, and realized what Conis said had a great deal of basis in fact. The woman’s earlobes were long, reaching past her shoulders, weighed down with chips of some bright stone.

 _Beth would be ripping her hair out over the insult_ , Kelly thought with a sigh.

“Quite a welcoming committee,” Kelly said, mild as milk. “Surprised you aren’t all off guarding the human you’ve shackled yourselves to.”

The one to the leader’s right, a woman just as sensuously curved, her hair fire-red and her eyes a bright blue, bristled. The golden-haired one calmed her with a gesture.

“In my day, Magi knew better than to talk in such ways to their betters,” said the one to the leader’s left. She was older-looking but no less beautiful than her companions, her skin as pale as the others, her hair a blazing white coil atop her head.

Kelly smirked. “Oh, don’t worry, we still do…if our betters are among us, of course.”

“Enel told us to let the priests kill the humans,” the golden one said, and opened her mouth to show rows of razor-sharp teeth, like an angler fish. “But I don’t think he’ll mind if we eat you.”

“There you go again, kissing Enel’s ass,” Kelly said, gathering the magic she would need and storing it where she could easily find it. “In my day, Daemons didn’t take orders from humans.”

Fighting these Daemons – and how could they be anything _but_ , as foul as they felt contrasted to the beauty they garbed themselves in? – was not her highest priority. Converting the pillars _was_.

( _Mistress, some idiot has covered the ruins in iron_.)

_…Pardon?_

( _A net of iron, to my guess. His name is Ohm_.)

The Ordeal of Iron. Good, things were proceeding on schedule-

“Of course we would help our cousin,” the golden one said, smiling. “He has given us so many delicious Magi to feast on and to get offspring on, that it would be rude to not reward him in some way.”

“You’re responsible for killing the rest of the Sky Island Magi, aren’t you.” It wasn’t a question.

All three Daemons smiled, the gesture turning their beautiful faces inhuman.

“We did,” the golden one admitted, and rage flowered in Kelly’s heart.

( _MISTRESS, ENEL HAS TOLD THE DAEMONS THEY’RE FREE TO HUNT!_ )

_WHAT?_

( _Robin and Nami both have already defeated two of the Priests, and the man Wiper has defeated one as well. With Ohm in his cage, Enel isn’t pleased that they’ve not done as he asked. He’s sent the Daemons out to finish the job. They’re heading for the Shandians…and for Conis. Apparently some have eaten the Enforcers who were hunting Nami and the Shandian child and are coming for them._ )

Kelly pivoted on a heel and lunged for the pillar-

Something flickered in between her and it, and she flung herself out of the way of the golden one.

“Ah, ah, ah, Magus,” the white haired one said, as the red haired one went for Kelly’s throat. “Not so fast.”

Kelly parried a blow, twisted, and knocked the red one flying. She stepped back, met the golden one head on, sliding under a blow that would have disemboweled her.

_Get to the pillar!_

The white haired one aimed low and fast, but Kelly was faster. She kicked back, slammed her feet into the Daemon’s face, and felt its teeth crunch under her steel-toed boots. It shrieked, fierce and enraged, falling back in a gushing of its blood.

The other two screeched their fury, as the magic began to boil uncontrollably in her belly.

 _Soru!_ Kelly was under the claws of the first, cartwheeling past the golden one, and she leapt-

“KILL THE BITCH _YOU IDIOTS_!” the golden one shrieked, just as Kelly’s hands connected.

 _Jal_ , Kelly thought, as she shoved all her Magic towards the rot, and whispered the spell that would wake all of the pillars. _Jal Saamraagyee, if you’re really there, and if you’re really listening…_

Power thundered from-from _somewhere_ , thundered through her blood and bones until her whole body was alight with the glory of it, until her eyes blazed with it.

Even with the endless rush of power, she kept enough sense to whisper the spell that would awaken the pillars. _Jal Saamraagyee_ , she thought. _Aag Saamraagyee, Prvthee Saamraagyee, Vaayu Saamraagyee_.

_Help Aegle’s daughter. Help Conis. Help the Shandians who guarded her. Give succor to those who lost their lives._

_Help **me**._

The obsidian pillar burst into a blinding brilliance, the seals that had once been tortured facsimiles now burning true.

Kelly threw back her head, and gave voice to words that were not hers, in a voice that was not hers.

“ **BEGONE FROM MY LANDS** ,” she roared, her voice singing through the air. “ **BLOOD OF THE FALLEN, BEGONE!** ”

Power smashed out, like a shockwave-

But it went in both directions, as more and more of that glorious light filled her and joined the power already there. Power blasted across the length of Skypiea, while still more flew across the sky, sending brilliant auroras out in its wake.

Daemons died in the flash, screaming as the light ripped their souls from their flesh bodies and burnt both into ash. The air was alight with screams, and Kelly knew without turning that the two lesser Daemons had been torn asunder. The top of the Tower exploded, as though something had burst free, and distantly she heard the victorious shriek of a falcon.

Kelly was set back on the ground, and she opened her eyes. Her body felt too light and too heavy, all at once, and turned to see what has happened.

The trees were the first things she noticed. They hadn’t been dead or dying before, but they certainly hadn’t been the healthiest looking.

Now they bloomed in a thousand different shades of brilliant emeralds and greens, bursting with life and vitality. Kelly could hear and feel and smell and know of the animals who have returned, roaring with life in their own ways.

Even those mutated by the Daemons were free, healed, with only a few scars to show for it.

For a single moment, Kelly could feel all of Skypiea, all of the sky itself, crying out in joy, in _freedom_. They were in her, and she was in them.

_As one we sing, we are free, we are free, we are **free**!_

Then she blinked and was back in her own body, though it still felt strange. The golden-haired Daemon lay on the ground, horribly burned and twisted, the only one who’d survived the assault.

Kelly smiled.

“I think that should do,” she said, and popped her shoulders before looking down at herself.

Her jacket had been burnt clean away, leaving her only in a black t-shirt over her tank-top. Her shoes were gone as well, though at least she still had her pants on.

The Daemon had pushed itself up onto its elbows, thought it looked as though it had taken all of the thing’s strength to do so. Kelly sauntered over to it, and grinned, slow and menacing.

“If I were merciful, I’d just go ahead and kill you now,” she said, humming a little. “But really, I’m not what you call the _merciful_ type-”

“Kelly,” a voice said. “Let me, instead.”

Her head snapped around. A figure was descending from the sky, her wings a massive plumage of white flecked with black.

The woman was dressed in rags, her hair loose and unbound, and she glowed like the sun whose light she was haloed in. As she touched down, her face became clear, and Kelly’s heart stopped.

A light brown face underlit with soft gold, bright brown eyes almost glowing under thick eyebrows, a proud jut of a nose, and a wide smile on thick, unpainted lips.

Kelly’s knees shook.

_-…“D-Do you want to go get something to eat?” Kelly asks, then wants to kick herself in the shin for that bit of inanity. Erin blinks, her bruises still dark around her eyes and mouth, before she smiles._

_Her front tooth is a little chipped, but Kelly thinks in that moment that she has never seen anything more beautiful…-_

“Erin?” she whispered, and Erin’s smile spread. She opened her arms.

Kelly raced to her and hauled her up and swung her around, kissing her mouth and closed eyes and every bit of her face she could get at.

“You’re alive, you’re alive, _you’re alive_ , holy fucking shit-” Kelly pulled back, but still kept her arms around the other woman’s waist. “Holy shit, when Conis told me the Daemons had killed you-”

“Conis? She’s still alive?” Erin asked, her hands clenching on Kelly’s shoulders as her feet dangled over the ground. “And, what the fuck Kel, you have _scales_. And you’re like seven feet tall. And where did these _muscles_ come from, _mierda_ , you’re like the fucking Terminator-”

“Says the girl with _feathers_ ,” Kelly teased, and Erin laughed.

“I suppose you’re right-” A faint groan interrupted what Erin was going to say next, and both Magi turned to look at the Daemon, who was struggling to rise.

Kelly moved towards it, but was stopped by Erin’s hand on her chest.

“Let me.”

Kelly heard the dark promise in her friend’s words, and stepped back. Something terrible had happened to Erin in the years they’d been parted. Something terrible and strange.

But they were together again, and Kelly wasn’t alone.

There was no thought that this couldn’t be Erin Torres, as her magic told her it _was_.

She watched Erin stalking towards the Daemon with grim intent, and thought about the perpetually scared little girl she’d pulled Daniel Sampson off of so many years ago.

As the Daemon began to scream in abject agony, Kelly grinned.

 _She’s not a scared little girl any longer_ , Kelly thought, pleased. _I like it._

( _MISTRESS, ENEL’S AFTER CONIS_ )

The scream jolted her straight out of her pleasure, and Kelly staggered under the force of it.

_Gin, what? She’s a Magus, she shouldn’t have any problem-_

( _She’s not a Magus of the water like you and she’s not_ nearly _as powerful as you are. She’s facing a man corrupted by Daemons and given incredible power. She is **losing**._ )

“Fuck, Erin we need to get moving _right now_ ,” Kelly cursed, seeing through Gin’s eyes. Through a web of metal, she watched a burned and staggering Conis hit the ground, and roll out of the way of a blast of lightning with only an inch to spare. She opened herself to Gin.

_Start sending as much of my magic as you can to her, Gin. We’ll be there soon._

Kelly felt the drain instantly, and thanked all the gods that she knew the feel of Conis’s magic. If she hadn’t, neither she nor Gin would have been able to do this.

Erin looked up, allowing the tortured Daemon a moment’s respite. “Kelly, I’m busy-”

“Conis is getting her ass kicked by Enel.”

Erin went ashen. The Daemon, however, started to laugh.

“For a h-human’s get, he’s cert-certainly proven him-himself,” the thing wheezed. Black ichor oozed from its mouth, and its skin seemed to bulge, cracking a thousand different places. “He’s going to kill the bitch just like he killed her mo-”

“Oh, that’s _more_ than enough from you,” Erin said, spinning on a heel. “ _Adolebitque, o sooraj_.”

Fire crested on a wave as the sun’s rays burst into solid light, focusing in a circle around the Daemon. It screamed and thrashed as the rays closed in, but there was nowhere it could go, even if it had the strength to do so.

The thing died in a brilliant corona of lights, burning away until all was left was a pile of ash. Soon even the ash was gone, picked up by an errant breeze, to be scattered where the wind took it.

Erin breathed in, and then out, before turning back to Kelly with a wide smile.

“Let’s go get Conis, shall we? We can get reacquainted on the way there.”

Kelly led the way through the trees as Erin told her story. Erin was every bit as fast as Kelly, propelled by Magic and adrenaline.

And as she did, Kelly got her first look into what had happened after she herself had been taken.

“There were storms the day when you were taken, and people didn’t realize you were gone until your parents got home,” Erin said quietly. “But when they did, your room was…it was just destroyed, and so was half the block. People were talking about a freak tornado and what have you, and that there was no possible way you could have survived. James and Rey spent months searching through half the state, trying to find your body.”

The names were unfamiliar for a moment, until Kelly jolted.

Her parents.

James and Rey Lewis. Those were her parents’ names.

How could she have forgotten?

(Ten years, it'd been, since she'd last seen them.)

“I don’t know if they ever stopped, because about four months later, I was driving to go visit my grandparents when I got grabbed as well. Massive tornadoes sprouted out of nowhere and plucked me right out of my car. I take it that’s what happened to you?”

“Ripped the roof right off my room,” Kelly confirmed.

“I landed on a small island in the Grand Line, populated all by Magi, in a much younger body. I lived there until my fifteenth birthday again, when we were-attacked.”

Erin closed her mouth, and refused to say more. Kelly understood.

“Well, I’ll tell you my story once we get Conis-oh buggering shit,” Kelly swore, seeing a maddened Enel pick Conis up and toss her smoking body against the metal net.

The girl crumbled to the ground, and lay still. Enel was laughing, and a Shandian warrior – Wiper – was screaming in rage, clinging to the metal net that separated him from the fallen Magus.

They wouldn’t make it in time, even if Kelly went full out-

“Kelly, do you trust me?” Erin barked, holding out her hand. Kelly looked at her.

“What are you planning?”

“I can get us to Conis. Just trust me.”

_-…“I’ll protect you, just trust me,” she whispers, and the bruised and battered girl in Kelly’s arms begins to cry...-_

Kelly took Erin’s hand, and felt Magic roar and twist, felt the world warp under her feet, felt it disappear-

They were falling through the air, their hands still linked, and Erin caught fire at the edges, gleaming with a light so holy it burned.

“ **Jyana**!”

There was the triumphant screech of a falcon as it burst in a blaze of light from Erin’s chest, and Kelly’s back hit feathers as it ducked underneath her. And then-

Then they were flying, and the Giant Jack was right there, and-

Conis was struggling feebly to rise as Enel called a massive bolt of lightning into existence, laughing wildly. Erin and Kelly exchanged a single look.

Kelly called her Magic to her, and leapt from Jyana’s back. She sped towards the ground, just as the lightning began to fall.

“CONIS!” a man roared, in fury merged with helpless fear.

 _Jal, protect my_ _sister_ , Kelly thought as she hit the ground, and dove to get her body over the other Magus. _Give me the strength to right the wrongs done to this land and her people._

Then there was lightning, and it was like the end of the world.

* * *

Conis had come to them when she was eleven years old, a pathetic, wheezing child of a land stealer, who cried more than even a babe did. She was nothing compared to her mother, to the beautiful Agda, who truly was a daughter of Aegle.

Wiper remembered how she had cried on the day Enel had taken over, crying and fighting her mother every step of the way even as the Daemons had battered at the shields they worked to hold.

Such a selfish child, he’d thought.

When had that changed?

Not in the way she’d acted after her mother had been eat-had died. She’d been blank and dead-eyed for days, for weeks after. He hadn’t blamed her for that, mired in his own grief and sense of failure.

_-…Agda towers over him, and he swallows hard. She is their tribe’s Magus, descended from Aegle herself, but she-_

_She lived for years among the land stealers, and he doesn’t know what to think of her. At least it is easier to look upon her dark face, as dark as his own, as dark as Laki’s and Kamakiri’s are, than it is with her pale-skinned daughter._

_Agda smiles, and kneels, putting him at her eye level. Her wings are magnificent, and they make his feel like lesser imitations._

_“You are Wiper, are you not?”_

_“Yes, Lady Magus,” he says immediately._

_“I am told by the chieftain that you are bidding fit to be one of Shandia’s greatest warriors when you are full grown.”_

_His chest swells with pride._

_“May I ask a favor of you, Wiper?”_

_He thinks he understands now what Old Jala meant when she said that pride would trip him when he walked. He nods anyway._

_“Anything, Lady Magus.”_

_“My daughter, Conis,” Agda begins, and smiles helplessly when Wiper frowns._

_He is not impressed with the little land stealer girl, who cries more than Laki’s newborn sister._

_“I know she has not much endeared herself to you, but she’s hurting so much right now. Could you protect her for me, Wiper? When I’m gone, my baby girl will have no one left.”_

_“But you’ll never be gone,” Wiper points out._

_How could she? Even in the scant year that she’d been among them, Wiper had grown used to seeing her stride about their camp, healing wounds, checking the totems, and allowing all who wished to speak with her. She fit into their home as simply and easily as if she’d been born to it, like Aegle herself had done with Calgara all those years ago._

_She was as common a sight as any of his people now._

_Agda smiles. “Perhaps, but…just do this for me? I need someone strong to protect her…even if you don’t like her very much.”_

_What else can he do? Wiper nods._

_“Yes, Lady Magus.”_

_Agda laughs, and Wiper thinks she might be the most beautiful woman he has ever seen, her hair gilded by the sunlight. He thinks he might do anything she asks of him, simply to hear her laugh again…-_

Gan Fall moved smoothly out of the way of his cannon blast, and Wiper growled. Slippery bastard. He’d never understood why-

He cartwheeled back, out of range of that damned swordsman from the Blue Sea.

The threats here were the snake towering overhead, Gan Fall, that swordsman and his oversized panther, and that damned Priest of Enel’s. _And_ his pet. The other Shandians who’d made it this far – they could handle the lesser Enforcers.

Wiper gritted his teeth, and turned his attention on the snake. Gan Fall likely wouldn’t attack him, being the idiot he was spewing his thoughtless words of ‘honor’ and ‘a common enemy’. And the Priest – if the swordsman dealt with him, he could focus on getting Aisa out.

Laki would never let him hear the end of it-

“Wiper!”

He whirled around, to see a figure racing towards the immense metal cage. Blonde hair, light eyes, plain clothing, white-and-brown wings. There was a fox racing at her heels.

“Conis?!” He darted over to the cage just as she reached it.

“Are you all right-”

“What the hell are you doing here?” he snapped. She was outside the barrier – Ancestors, hadn’t she learned by now that she was safest there? Hadn’t Erin’s death taught her as much?

“Ending this. Getting back our-your homeland,” she said, and the correction made something in his chest ache. Even after all this time, she still never considered herself one of them.

“You’re an idiot,” he all but snarled. “What if they decide a raid with you gone? What of those you’ve left without protection?”

“They’re safe. They’ll be safe, even if-even we don’t succeed here.”

“We?”

Conis flushed, as Su cantered around her legs. “Ah, don’t yell, but the Snake, the Snake he’s-he’s a Magus, Wiper. He was a friend of Erin’s when they were younger, and he wanted vengeance. He’s gone to bring down the pillars, and turn them against Enel.”

“ _What?_ ”

“He can do it, Wiper, I know he can. I trust him, and he’s,” she took a breath, and Wiper watched as her cheeks flushed red. “He’s the strongest Magus I’ve ever met, stronger even than my mother. He wants to help us. He will help us get back…get back your land.”

“Isn’t it ours?” he blurted, as the fighting raged on behind him. He was only vaguely aware of that panther smashing an Enforcer away from his back, before ripping out the goat-man’s throat.

Conis blinked. “What?”

“Ours. Our homeland…you’re Shandian as well.”

Conis stared at him for a long, long moment, and he was reminded of when they were children, when he’d first seen her without tears streaming down her cheeks.

_-…“His name was Calgara and her name was Aegle,” he says, looking up at the statues high above his head. “They were great and powerful, and when we were humiliated, he and his sons, she and her daughters – they kept us together. Kept us whole, when we might have fractured. Even when the land stealers stole Aegle’s daughters from us, they never forgot.”_

_The little land-stealer girl is quiet, and when he looks at her, he sees something strange on her pale face as she looks up at Aegle’s carved face. Something intense, the way he feels whenever he looks upon Calgara’s._

_“Mama didn’t tell me much about her,” she says, folding her hands behind her back. She takes a shuddering breath, and looks at him. “I didn’t think she was real.”_

_“She’s your ancestor, why wouldn’t she be real?” he scoffs, and Conis stares at him._

_“Mine?”_

_He scoffs again, turning away from the brightness in her eyes._

_“Of course she is, why shouldn’t she be?”_

_“I didn’t think I belonged here,” Conis says, very quietly. “Not like Mama does. I’m so-I’m so weak and useless, compared to all of you. Even babies can do stuff better than me.”_

_Wiper rolls his eyes, uncomfortable. “You’re Aegle’s blood, you’re can’t be useless. You just cry too much.”_

_Conis lets out a watery giggle, and the two of them sit in silence for a time, before-_

_“Could you tell me stories about her?” Conis asks._

_“Why should I?”_

_“Because you want to,” Conis says. “Because you-you’re proud of her, and you want me to know about her. Because Mama says I have a d-duty to you all, even if I don’t want to. Even if you’re rude. I want to understand.”_

_He scowls at her, and is taken aback when she giggles, and her smile reaches her eyes…-_

Conis swallowed, and smiled at him, weak and watery.

“Goddesses, why do you always do this to me,” she said, laughing a bit.

“Mistress, he’s coming,” Su said, growing as tails bristled around her.

Conis moved back, and drew two fans from within her tunic. They weren’t hers, nor of any make he recognized of their tribe.

Then, lightning cracked and flashed, and there was the smell of dead things. A man – no, a _mockery_ of a man – stood there, flanked by drooling beasts that might have once been dogs, with red pits for eyes.

Enel, with the strange tattoos that crossed his chest like a hundred eeling worms, stood there, smiling in triumph.

“I was wondering when you would scurry out from under your rock, Agda’s daughter,” he said, and Conis went still.

Wiper tensed.

“ _Keep away from her, Enel!_ ” he snarled, and the false god flicked a dismissive glance his way, before focusing back on Conis.

The dogs at his heels rose up, drooling streams of brown saliva from their slack jaws.

“But why is the only Magus left to the Shandians so stupid as to wander without protection? And not even with the other idiots out in the forest?” Enel sighed mockingly. “At least they’ll have use enough, as food.”

“You _bastard_ ,” Conis hissed.

He shrugged, and smiled like a mad man.

“You’ll die, just like they will,” he said, and flicked his fingers in her direction. Wiper growled, his fingers bleeding from their grip on the metal dome. Again he was helpless, again he was-

Su met one of the dogs head on as it leapt at Conis. Lightning flashed, shearing the air, but it banked, smashed away by a flick of one blue battle fan.

Enel’s eyebrows flew up.

“No,” Conis said quietly, the air curling around the fans made of kairōseki – they had to be Nephele’s ancient battle fans, spoken of in their stories, they could be nothing else. But how had she gotten her hands on them?

“No,” Conis said again. “I have no intention of dying. Not to you. Not to a false god.”

“I am no false god-”

“You are a man with delusions of grandeur, corrupted and twisted by his desires. No more.” Conis’s back was straight in her defiance.

Lightning thundered down. Conis was fast, Wiper could see that, but she was no fighter. She had not trained for it, like he and the others had. Even her magic couldn’t keep up with the speed and ferocity of Enel’s attacks.

Even with Nephele’s battle-fans, Conis would lose.

 _She knows it_ , Wiper thought, his attention solely focused on the battle in front of his eyes. _She knows she will lose._ But still she fought. Wiper felt something slam into his back, and absolute agony filtered through him. A Reject Dial.

But he had eyes only for the woman fighting steps away from his fingers. He cared for nothing else.

A blast of lightning caught her in the side, and Conis screamed. He was helpless again and he couldn’t do anything to help her, like he’d been with her mother-

_-…Agda is dragged away from the repaired totem, dragged towards the Daemons, who drool and gibber in their inhuman voices, and then they are on her. She screams._

_He will remember it for as long as he lives._

_She screams and screams and does not stop screaming, even when her daughter’s cries have dropped into muffled sobs and he remains trapped and helpless behind the barrier._

_Then she stops screaming, and all that is left is the sound of tearing flesh…-_

She rolled out of the way, but Enel was waiting for her-

Then, a sound. A sound that was not a sound but something more, something far deeper, like a gong struck from far away.

Power came then. A shockwave of iridescent light and blinding glory blotted out the world, until all Wiper was aware of was the bite of the metal into his hands.

There were screams in the distance as the light burned and burned and _burned_ , the inhuman screams of Enel’s pet monsters. They lingered even as the light faded away, and Wiper blinked spots out of his eyes.

A swash of colors spread across the sky, swathes of reds, greens, purples, blues, and a hundred others Wiper had no name for. The air felt…it felt cleaner, and so much lighter than it had in years.

Conis stood straight, smiling, even as Enel staggered back.

Blood trickled down the man’s face, even as his eyes burned a twisted, inhuman black-red.

“What have you done?” he shrieked, his expression warped into rage. “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?”

“The Daemons are dead,” Conis said, laughing incredulously. “The skies are safe from them for a thousand centuries more. All of your kin, Enel – **_they’re dead_**. Your need to punish Agda’s daughter blinded you to the true threat.”

Enel reared back, even as Wiper stared at the wildly laughing girl.

“I came to distract you, while Ciel, while my brother Magus paid vengeance on the Daemons who slaughtered _our_ kin. Your pillars have fallen, Enel, and though you stand for now, you will fall just the same.”

Wiper’s fingers shook.

How many years had it been, since the barriers had been forced to remain active constantly? How many years since he and his people had been forced to stay behind the barrier for their own lives because of those Daemons?

Wiper swallowed hard, staring at the straight line of Conis’s back, the proud tilt of her head.

And then Enel started to laugh.

It was not a pleasant sound, and it was not indicative of healthy joy or happiness in any regard. It was the sound of a man who’d thoroughly snapped and _enjoyed_ it.

“Conis, _get away from him!_ ” Wiper yelled, knowing something bad was going to happen.

“I can bring them back,” the blond man said, still giggling obscenely. “I can bring them back, I can-”

Lightning crashed out, while Enel still made those sounds. Black lightning, warped and tinged red-black. Conis dove away, but it followed her and it hit.

She made this gagging noise and spasmed, and then Enel grabbed her by the throat. Su dove at Enel, but another bolt of that red-black lightning caught the fox directly in the belly, knocking it flying.

More lightning flared, cresting over Conis, and she screamed and screamed while Enel laughed and laughed, and then he tossed her against the metal. She hit it and crumpled at Wiper’s feet.

He was kneeling, reaching out to touch her, helpless rage in his throat and lungs until he thought he would burn alive from the inside out. What was the use of his training, of the days he had spent fighting and _bleeding_ -

What was the use, if he failed his tribe in such ways again and again? He had been forced to watch as Agda had been murdered, as Erin had been murdered, and now he would be helpless yet again-

“Conis, run,” he hissed at her, but he knew it would not work.

He knew she would not run, nor could she. There were black lines crawling up her flesh, and it took all her strength to push herself to her knees and hands.

“You will not ruin all I have worked for,” Enel hissed, looking less and less human, like a human skin stretched over something warped and twisted beyond humanity. “I did not kill that human whore, I did not bow before the Kings so that a _child_ could take away _what is mine!_ ”

Lightning built in the air, enough to burn the air itself. It built until the sky and the brilliant auroras still lingering were blotted out by the foul light.

“Die, Agda’s spawn,” Enel hissed, and brought the lightning down.

“CONIS!” Wiper screamed, helpless in his rage, and the world went white.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **TRANSLATIONS AND FOOTNOTES**
> 
>  
> 
> *If you see any inconsistencies – like with where the hell people are or how the hell they got from point A to point Q…please cut me some slack. I’ve never had to work with so many characters who are doing so many different things and changing so much shit before in any of my fic. Also, there are a fair few offscreen changes to canon that Kelly is not privy to, so, yeah.
> 
>  **Adolebitque, o sooraj** – _Sermo_ ; “Burn, oh sun”. A spell used to call fire by those who are not primarily born of fire, ie, a spell that would allow Wind Magi (like Erin) to use fire. Can have dangerous consequences if not used properly.


	31. On the Precipice of Greatness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kelly comes face-to-face with Enel.

* * *

It felt like the wind.

The lightning – though it was more like hellfire than lightning at this point, twisted into an unrecognizable weapon by an equally twisted Enel – simply _dispersed_ as it slammed into her back, her own magic taking it and rendering it to harmless light.

She could feel Conis beneath her, shielded from the insane monster’s fury. Su was there as well, dragged under the protection offered by Kelly’s magic.

When the light and the roaring died away, Kelly stood and faced Enel.

She could see it now, the sheer corruption that threaded through his very being. He was well on his way to becoming a Daemon in fact as well as intent. If she concentrated, she could see a pit of electric yellow in his chest, almost completely covered with the foul corruption.

“Erin!” she barked, not taking her eyes off the man in front of her. “Take Jyana and help the Shandians in the forest. They’ll need you, if the Daemons are hunting. Kill them and the Priests, if you can. I’ll come help as quick as possible.”

There was a shout of confirmation from the woman flying above her head, followed by another blinding crack of light, and Erin and her falcon were gone.

“So,” Kelly said, rocking back and forth on her heels. “Interesting little scheme you’ve got going on here, I must admit. Too bad Erin’s not going to be your little renewable foodsource anymore.”

Enel snarled, and Kelly laughed. The pieces were slowly clicking together in her mind, pieces she didn’t even know she had had. She had wondered why Enel had kept Erin alive at first, but then Kelly had seen the old bite wounds and bruises.

The Daemons had eaten the Magi of the other islands after using Enel and his twisted powers as a springboard to breach those islands’ wards, no doubt. But Enel had been stupid – he’d let them gorge themselves, not knowing that a Daemon’s hunger was _endless_ and could never be satiated. If he’d restrained them – but he hadn’t. He hadn’t, and he had only the familial ‘bond’ of his blood to keep the Daemons from turning on him, not even a Contract.

He’d had to find something that would appease them. The things had killed Conis’s mother before he could take her, no doubt crazed by hunger, and it was unlikely the woman could have survived what Erin had.

Enel must have thanked all the gods when Erin had come to the islands, because in her there was a food source that could keep Daemons loyal to him as he conquered the sky.

But, why? Why in the hell had he done all of this?

His power was immense, and his Logia fruit made him one of the strongest non-Magi humans Kelly had met so far. He could have gotten his plans moved along without the help of monsters. And yet he had willingly consigned himself to working with Daemons, those who raped his mother, and all for what?

More power? _Surely_ not. There were much easier, and less ‘deal-with-the-devil’-esque ways of getting power in this world than by consorting with Daemons.

Why had he done _this_?

Kelly didn’t want to think of the islands this maniac had left in ruin behind him, the lives that had been lost, for whatever reason.

In canon, this man had been a delusional – but very smart – narcissistic monster with dreams of going to the moon.

How in the hell had that intelligent, remorseless villain – who Kelly had actually admired, in a twisted way – become this mockery of a human?

Enel pulled himself up, and stared at her.

And she _got_ it, as she looked into his wild, strangely desperate eyes.

Oh, he hadn’t gone to the Daemons _willingly_. Or maybe he had, with an idea that he could control these monsters, that he was smart enough and _better_ enough to do so. She could see even canon-Enel falling into that trap, much less a corrupted child born of rape.

He had found himself saddled with those who could kill him, those who _would_ kill him unless he proved himself worthy. He’d found himself trapped, if Kelly was reading him right.

So he’d ventured out, on his little conquering expedition, and he’d _succeeded_ , only to get more than he ever wished for. More than he could control. He’d had that fear in his heart all along, something that canon Enel hadn’t – what if the Daemons turned on him? The Daemons he consorted with would be stronger

But the Ark she remembered from canon – if it was real as well, it was a way for him to get out. A Plan B, so to speak.

It still might be. Most of the Daemons here had died, but what about the others? Kelly had killed high-ranking Daemons when she’d turned the pillars on, and no doubt many more as the skies were rid of their filth.

And with Enel still alive, the onus of so many deaths would fall squarely on _his_ shoulders.

She didn’t know how such things happened among Daemons, but the punishment Enel would receive for this could not possibly be pleasant.

“You will die, for I am God-” he began, but Kelly laughed, low and derisive and cutting.

“ _God_? Don’t make me laugh. You’re just a pathetic little boy trying to run from the stupid mistakes he’s made,” she said, and lightning curled bright and vicious in Enel’s hand.

It shot out, black-red and foul, and Kelly lifted a hand as it neared her face-

-and batted it aside.

It struck the ground yards away, the heat turning the ground to tortured glass.

Enel looked-he looked terrified now, though he was making a concerted effort to keep his composure. She wondered how many humans and Magi alike had fallen before him.

Many, she thought.

But she would not be one of them.

“I’d suggest running now,” Kelly said, mild.

She could kill him. She could reach out her magic and strangle him into a corpse, drive out every ounce of corruption until all that was left was ash.

But that wouldn’t be the _point_.

Luffy had to do it. She wanted to see Enel get his ass kicked by a human, by someone _without_ the power Kelly had at her beck and call. She wanted to see Enel get his ass handed to him by someone he considered lesser, someone he _didn’t_ fear.

That wasn’t her.

…Pity.

There was another crack of lightning, and Enel was gone.

Kelly closed her eyes and spread her magic out far and wide for Erin, finding her easily. She was in the middle of a group of rapidly dying blots of corruption – the few Highborn who had survived the assault from the pillars, and the Priests, who were just as foul as Conis had said.

Well, Kelly had used more general terms for the magic she’d woven into the pillars. Enel had survived, after all, and those who were capable of taking human-shape may have been able to slip under the spell’s notice.

 _I have_ got _to learn to be more specific_ , she thought with a sigh. A pained moan from behind her brought her out of her thoughts in a flash, and Kelly knelt by Conis’s side.

Very carefully, she pulled the other Magus into her arms. Her magic flowed from her into the injured girl, easing the agony of her burns and broken ribs. Conis’s fingers clutched at Kelly’s shirt, but the girl’s eyes were all for the Shandian warrior kneeling behind the metal net. And his would not leave her.

Kelly snuck a quick look at Zoro and Ohm going at each other – with Gin battling that oversized dog – and whispered a prayer of magic and strength to make Zoro’s swords harder than steel, a prayer she remembered from the words written on Gan Fall’s lance.

(Where the hell was Gan Fall, anyway? Was he with Luffy, in the thrashing form of the snake?)

She shook that thought away, and turned her attention back to Conis and Wiper. As gently as she could, she picked Conis up, and brought her closer to Wiper.

Conis’s shaking, burned fingers tangled with Wiper’s bloody, bruised ones with a surprising strength.

There’s a history here, Kelly thought with no little surprise. She looked at Wiper’s face and saw a sort of a well-hidden helpless fondness. Conis’s puttering magic was reaching out, ignoring even her own wounds in its attempt to heal the man.

“Oi, Shandian, lean here,” Kelly said, fighting not to be amused.

“Why?” Wiper asked, his eyes not leaving Conis.

“Because Conis’s magic is going to you to heal _you_ , and she needs it to heal herself. Lean here so I can heal you myself, yeah?”

Conis flushed, still struggling to do more beyond lean against Kelly’s side.

Wiper did so, and Kelly sent the magic coursing through him, making him gasp and grit his teeth. But his wounds healed, and Conis’s magic was able to get back to healing Conis.

“You always were such a fool,” Wiper whispered, his voice aggrieved.

“I just wanted to…” Conis rubbed her eyes wearily. “I just…for once in my _life_ , Wiper. I wanted to do something right. Something that would-that would make you feel proud of me. Something that showed that I wasn’t-that I wasn’t…that I was _worthy_ of y-”

She cut herself off, and Wiper’s gaze was scarily intense.

Kelly was starting to feel rather like she was intruding on something. _My, this is quite awkward_.

Then, she felt Enel’s presence – pitch black, human but _not_ – moving closer to Erin and the Shandians.

Shit.

“Time to move, Conis,” Kelly ordered. “Can you stand?”

“Y-Yes, what’s going on-”

“Enel’s heading for Erin and what’s left of the Shandian warriors. Also-oh fucking hell, _are you shitting me?!_ ”

She was seeing through Shere Khan’s eyes, and saw the rest of the Straw Hats with the Shandians and Erin, fighting for their lives as lightning rained down on them along with the laughter of the twisted Highborn.

“How in the _fuck_ did they get there?” Kelly groaned. They should have been with the ship for fuck’s sake, or most of them in the Snake’s gullet like Luffy probably was, not _there_ -

Nami was there, fighting alongside Robin with lightning crackling down her hands and staff, with Chopper and Usopp and Sanji, who was white as paper with his fear. The remaining Priests cantered around them, twisted and broken caricatures of humanity.

Hopefully Luffy was still trapped with the gigantic snake. Hopefully.

If nothing _else_ had gone so spectacularly off the rails like the rest of this whole situation had.

Canon obviously meant nothing right now, and Enel was out for blood.

 _Fuck_.

“On my back, my girl,” Kelly ordered, slinging the smaller Magus up.

Conis squeaked, and clung to her neck.

“Wait-!” Kelly ignored Wiper’s shout as she pulled Magic up and through her body. She couldn’t do what Erin had done (and didn’t want to even attempt it until she knew full well she wouldn’t do something like splinch herself) but she could go pretty damn fast. “Wait, damn you-”

“You want me to save your fellow warriors from an agonizing death and having their corpses eaten, you better shut the fuck up and let me work,” Kelly snapped, more focused on the magic in her than anything else.

Wiper ground his teeth. “Conis.”

Conis looked at him.

“Come back to me.”

Kelly saved Conis the burden of answering by unleashing the magic like a spring, dropping into the fastest _Soru_ she’d ever entered in her life.

The world blurred into a furious riot of colors as Kelly followed the trail of magic to her Familiar.

* * *

_Of fucking course they had to be here_ , Sanji thought, staring up at the Daemons as they danced around them, monsters that might have once been beautiful women, distended and warped. The Priests were still barely – just barely – human, but all the more terrifying for their mutations.

His fingers shook with terror and sweat trickled down his spine.

Nami’s back was pressed up against his, her shoulders threaded with tension like iron. Robin was at his right, and Chopper on his left with Usopp. Shere Khan snarled as she prowled in front of him.

The guerillas they had run into after being forced to escape the Merry had their own group, one that was steadily decreasing as the remaining Daemons picked them off. They didn’t have a viciously protective tiger that was capable of rending the thick flesh of the Daemons with ease, after all, though they were putting up one hell of a fight.

One Daemon, white-skinned with double-jointed limbs and legs, cackled as it tried to draw close to him.

Shere Khan snarled at the golden-eyed monster, planting herself between him and it and growing twice as large as she had been before. Sanji focused more on her than on the thing that looked at him like-like that _thing_ back in Arabasta had done. It helped with the terror.

_Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, oh god no-_

A Daemon chittered as it dragged a guerilla away, consuming the man’s flesh while he was still alive. Sanji would hear the man’s screams in his dreams.

If he lived that long.

_Shit, shit, shit, shit-_

“Little boy, you would taste so good-” The white-skinned, heavy-breasted Daemon’s crooning was cut off as wind shook the trees, a hurricane force gale blasting through the clearing.

But the wind barely touched them, or the guerillas. It went for the Daemons, and they _screamed_ -

“Jyana!” a female voice called, and a falcon burst into view, wingspan well over six feet. It shrieked in vicious glee, before swooping down and plucking free a female guerilla who had been fighting to escape its claws.

The falcon tossed the woman back into the other guerillas, before it went for the Daemon’s eyes.

“ _Erin?!_ ” one of the guerillas cried out.

“Jyana! Shere Khan! KILL THEM!” The same thundering female voice as before sang out, and Sanji turned his head as both falcon and tiger leapt to obey.

A woman was descending from the sky, glowing with ethereal power. Her wings were far larger than the falcon’s, a bright and glorious white – _like an angel_ , he thought dazedly – and her eyes blazed.

The Daemons let out a cacophony of noises – screams of anguish and rage and hunger – and leapt at her. But the woman was ready-

“By the blood, I call thee! Vaayu Saamraagyee, my mother of mothers, grant me strength, grant me power! _Et cantant venti_!”

Tornadoes burst free of the woman’s brown hands, and she met the onrushing Daemons headfirst, glowing so fiercely it hurt to look directly at her.

Sanji barely even realized that the falcon – Jyana, had the angel called her? – had herded the guerillas towards them and remained there with Shere Khan, guarding them all as the angel slaughtered the monsters.

Power danced and flared. Sanji watched as the woman carved blood and gore into the air with her dance.

Zeff had told him women were weaker – his entire life had been based on the fact that women were to be _protected_ , that women were not to get their hands dirty with _fighting_ – and he had believed it. Women were not to be touched. Women must be protected, always.

And now this woman was protecting him. Nami was at his back and Robin-san was at his side, and there were female guerillas among them as well, using their spears with fierce rage in their eyes, while he cowered.

 _Was I wrong?_ _Was Zeff wrong about this? Was he been wrong about everything?_

The Daemon lunged towards a guerilla who had fallen trying to avoid the attacks. It made a chittering noise like the thing in Arabasta had, still grotesquely female, still laughing in a mockery of a female voice.

_Men aren’t meant to hurt women! That’s how it’s always been._

And yet-

_We don’t have women on this ship, because they can’t handle it._

Sanji felt something tremble in his soul.

There was a flash of memory before his eyes. A woman, reclining in bed, her face and eyes so old, so tired-

_…“We were guardians, you know? Guardians of those who could not protect themselves from the evil in the world. Men, women, children – we sheltered them all in Her name, and fought to protect them, against all manner of enemies. Evil comes in many forms, and it was our job – my job – to give them all shelter.”_

_“Even men?”_

_“Of course. Just because a man is a man, does not mean that he is infallible. It does not mean that he does not deserve someone to protect him. Women and men can be strong and need of protection in equal measure…”_

-and something sang through his bones.

Nami’s back was like the mast of a ship against his back. It steadied him.

The words came with ease, as something like lightning exploded through him.

Or rather…something like _fire_.

“ _Diable_ -” he caught the edge of the wind and spun with it, “- _Jambe!_ ”

His foot crashed into the Daemon’s face (something cracked painfully in his leg as it connected, but he didn’t _care_ ), and it was permitted a single shriek of agony before the momentum carried it back, into the trees, eaten alive with fire.

He landed on the ball of his foot, fire still curling up his leg. It didn’t hurt him.

Shere Khan had dragged the guerilla back into the safety of their circle. Hands pulled Sanji back as well – Nami, and Usopp. Robin snapped the neck of a Daemon who’d been going after Chopper, tearing it apart with brutal efficiency.

The Daemons screamed their rage, and the fire inside him flickered in terror.

 _-…“Being brave does not mean an absence of fear. One is brave in_ spite _of the fear, my son.”…-_

His leg ached horribly, but Sanji curled his hands into fists, and braced his feet, readying them to move even through the pain.

Lightning crashed down, and it was only the falcon’s scream that got them out of the way in time.

A guerilla had not been so quick to move, and screamed as the Daemons had, eaten up in a blink by the black lightning. And Enel was there, as he had been when he’d chased them from the ship with his Daemons.

But black lines twisted up the man’s arms, and the man’s expression was foul, inhuman. Cracks showed a moving, twisting _foulness_ behind Enel’s skin, a putrescent wound that Enel seemed to glory in.

Something in Sanji’s chest contorted in disgust at the sight of the-the _abomination_ , and then the fire in his legs began to shrink as the Daemons and Priests rallied at the sight of the man.

The angel howled her grief, an enraged shriek echoed by the other Shandians: “ _Braham! No!”_ \- the name of the Shandian who had been burnt to ash? – and lunged at Enel like a burning white comet, the man spinning to meet her in a shockwave of power.

The Daemons crouched and cantered, tongues drooling, wounds seeping black ichor.

 _No_ , Sanji thought, desperate. Exhaustion ate at his lungs, his bones. Robin was whispering beside him, words in a language he thought he should understand but didn’t, a prayer. Usopp was crying silently.

Then, the world _roared_.

…No, it was a voice that made the world shake under its fury, heralded by power that made even the angel’s entrance and the wave of power before that look paltry. It smashed through the air without pause or faltering, and the Daemons screamed like animals before the butcher’s block.

And then there was Ciel, dropping from the sky like the angry fist of god, his scales blazing with blinding light. He slammed into the nearest Daemon and tore it to shreds. Blood splattered the ground.

A blonde girl dressed like a guerilla hurried over to the others, but Sanji only had eyes for Ciel. The Snakeman was a hurricane given form as he danced death through the Daemons and Priests.

It was over in moments, and then Ciel stood in the wreckage and gore, covered in blood, his eyes a little bit mad, and a little bit inhuman. But it didn’t scare Sanji. Instead, something prickled down his spine as Ciel panted, his scales chips of fierce light.

Then Ciel threw back his head, and howled a challenge. The beads around his neck blazed in the sunlight that bathed the clearing for one breathless moment.

_“ **ENEL!** ”_

The roar went on and on, and Enel faltered. The lightning died away. There was true horror, true _terror_ on the man’s face now, and it made him look slightly more human.

But then the angel was swooping low, murder on her feathered face, and music was filling the air. “ _Cantáte, O lucem mundans!_ ”

Light that was dark, and held the essence of all colors burst forward, endlessly dark and yet endlessly comforting, and it arrowed towards Enel with deadly, all-encompassing intent.

But then lightning smashed out, halting the attack for a second. There was a vicious cracking noise, the stench of scorched flesh and air, and when Sanji’s vision cleared, he could see that Enel had vanished.

“ _Damn_ ,” Ciel hissed. “Do you know where he went, Erin?”

The angel, panting a little and looking no less infuriated than Ciel did, shook her head.

“Fucking damn it all-”

“E-Erin?” That voice came from one of the female guerillas, a beautiful woman with long black hair, singed and scorched with lightning, her skin marked by various wounds.

The angel turned to the speaker, and her lovely brown eyes widened with shock and wonder.

“Laki…oh, _Laki_ ,” she whispered reverently, and the female guerilla rushed to her, catching the angel up in her arms. They were joined by a male guerrilla – one that was smaller, lankier than the others, wearing glasses – who wrapped his arms around the angel as well, burying his face into her hair.

Most of the surviving guerillas had focused around the three, whispering and laughing with shocked relief, while the rest had gone to cluster around the blonde lady who’d come with Ciel.

Ciel sighed, and that raging fury seemed to die down as he approached them. He still gleamed with health and vitality, the scales on his muscles – Sanji had never seen Ciel without his jacket, and couldn’t look away – still shining.

“To the best of my knowledge, Zoro and Luffy are fine. Zoro is fighting the last of Enel’s Priests, and Gin’s with him. Luffy, I believe, is currently stuck in the body of that oversized snake around the Giant Jack,” he said, folding his arms over his chest.

Sanji, realizing that he was watching the muscles straining in Ciel’s arms a little too closely, flushed and turned away. His leg ached horribly, and he gritted his teeth.

Shere Khan braced against his good leg, and made a faint little _mrr_ noise, encouraging him to lean more of his weight on her.

“I think Aisa is in there as well,” Nami said, her mouth a thin line.

“Aisa?”

“My little sister? Something happened to her?” This from the black-haired guerilla, with her arms still firmly wrapped around the angel’s – Erin, was she called? – shoulders.

“Shere Khan and I tried to lead them away from Aisa and Luffy, but that snake was there and-” Nami cut herself off, shook her head. “At least the Daemons didn’t even try going near it but…"

Ciel held up a hand as the female guerilla’s – _Laki_ , Erin-san had called her – face paled.

“Luffy may be a dumbass, but he’ll keep the kid safe, no matter what,” he said, interrupting whatever the woman had been about to say. “And you _know_ it’d take more than getting swallowed by a snake to slow him down.”

Nami breathed in. “You’re right.”

“The Daemons and Priests are dead – or most all should be, if Zoro hasn’t taken care of Ohm yet. We need to get the Giant Jack, now. Erin, Conis, are you capable?”

Both women looked at each, and back at Ciel. They nodded as one.

“The Giant Jack? Ciel, why do we have to go there?” Usopp asked, sounding exhausted. He and Chopper were leaning heavily against Jyana, the immense falcon watching them all with careful eyes.

“Enel is a threat,” Jyana said then, and Sanji’s head snapped around in shock.

A clear, female voice had come from the falcon, as clear as her Mistress’s.

What the _shit?_

The Straw Hats all startled as he did, Usopp and Chopper all but leaping away from the bird, while Robin’s eyes widened and Nami took a step back. The guerillas, the blonde woman, and Erin didn’t seem surprised, though, and neither did Ciel.

“Enel is a threat, and must be removed. He mentioned once to my Lady that he had safeguards that would allow him to go to the Moon, if all fell apart. A ship,” the falcon said gravely, and unease prickled through the group.

“An Ark,” Erin said, and her breath shuddered. “Yes, I remember, vaguely. He kept it underground, somewhere near the Jack, I do believe, though I could be wrong. He rambled about going to the Moon a fair bit.”

Erin and Ciel looked at each other, a thousand words in a single glance.

“If he gets to that thing and gets in the sky, he’ll burn Skypiea to the ground behind him to hide his tracks,” Ciel said grimly. “Erin, let’s get these people moving.”

Erin nodded, and pulled the blonde woman to her, after stepping reluctantly out of the arms of the two guerillas.

“Nami, and the rest of you, obey Erin and Conis, you understand?” Ciel’s voice was hard, like steel.

“We’re going to Luffy?” Nami asked.

“Hopefully he’s there. Zoro, at the very least, should be, and if Luffy’s not, Zoro’s the best one for finding him.”

(Which was true. The idiot swordsman, as bad with directions as he was, seemed to have an inner compass that allowed him to find Luffy at all times.)

“Is there anything we should…know, before we do so?” Robin asked, and her eyes were sharp on Ciel’s face.

A minute tremor went through Ciel’s broad, muscled shoulders, but he shook his head and looked her in the eye. Sanji wondered if anyone else had even seen it, a gesture of fear so small in a man that rarely gave way to such things unless he couldn’t help it.

“Erin and Conis are trained Magi. They’ll make sure aught is safe for you all, even for you Devil Fruit users,” he said.

Sanji froze in shock, barely daring to breathe.

Even the pain in his leg seemed far away in that moment.

“Magi?” Nami asked, sounding curious.

“Magic-workers,” Ciel said calmly. “They’ll see us to the Giant Jack in a hurry.”

_-…“What is that?” he asks, feeling curious and young, looking at the pile of feathers and scales in a bloody heap on the floor. Another opponent_

_His father smiles, very cruelly, and yet somehow gently for him. He’s done well in his exercises these last days, and so his father tolerates him._

_“Garbage. I think this one escaped. Guard! Have the trash removed.”_

_The pile moans and writhes, and Sanji watches as a single blue eye appears in the midst of the feathers, to glare up at his father with utter hate._

_“Bastard,” it hisses. “You’ll pay for wh-what you’ve done to_ her _.” Then it slumps, and goes still and is carried away by the guards._

 _Vinsmoke Judge laughs. “Magi,” he says, the word a derisive mockery. “No better than animals, really. Remember that, my son. You are better than they are. You are_ above _them.”…-_

Sanji trembled, his palms clammy.

* * *

It wasn’t supposed to have ended like this.

He was God, he was a King, he was a _Conqueror_ -

He remembered walking into the shadows, dripping blood. He remembered the screams and pleading of those he bound in chains. He remembered looking into the shadows and having them look _back_.

Enel drug his hands down his face, trying to still the fierce laughter that bubbled up as the ants around him worked frantically to get the Ark into the air.

 _We can make you a King_ , they had said, before dragging the first of the Magi he’d brought to them into the shadows.

Enel had heard the agonized screams. He’d gloried in them.

_Bathe in their blood, child._

Pale hands had stroked his face and arms, smearing blood there.

_Drink it. Feel the power you could but claim for your own._

Oh, and he had. He _had_.

He’d kicked one whore in the face as she clutched at his leg, pleading for mercy. He’d watched as the thing behind her had rutted into her, and then bit huge chunks of flesh from her still twitching body.

He preferred just the blood, himself. It was warm, and tasted finer than any wine.

He carved swathes into the sky for them, as they had carved their claws into his body, making his lightning infallible to the curses of the Magi. He brought his sisters and brothers meat and food, and they had praised him.

Enel _shook_ , seated on his throne. He did not even notice one ant fleeing from the caverns, so deep in his own memories he was.

He had corrupted others – but they were pitiful imitations. They’d fallen like all the rest.

He would not fall with them.

The whore who’d spawned him had told him stories, when he had been too young and when she hadn’t been seized with her shrieking hate and despair. She’d told him of the moon and her people.

(Her wings were shredded and broken stumps, from what Enel’s father had done, she’d hissed.)

 _Abomination_ , she’d told him. _My kin would have killed you, and saved me. I know they would have._

“But I killed you first,” he whispered, his words so quiet they were lost as soon as they left him.

He’d remembered, though. He’d remembered and would go there.

There would be no place else to hide from the _Rakta_ , now that one of the illegitimate daughters of Rudyai-raā was dead because of him.

 _Because of the whore_ , he thought, _and because of that_ Magi _._

Green-blue scales, and power that could shake the world. He wanted Enel to tremble.

(And he _had_.)

The Ark began to move.

He would have gold to last him – beautiful gold, beautiful like the eyes of his sister, who had laughed as he had brought the brown-skinned Magi to her and said _savor the meal_ – and he would have the moon.

A throne on the moon, Enel thought, and called the ants to him. They clustered in lines before him, reeking and sweat-soaked, trembling. Then there was lightning, and screams, and ash.

The few remaining ants scattered, but Enel brought them down and dragged them to him.

Distasteful as it was, with ants and not Magi, he needed his strength, if he wanted to make sure that Skypiea would hold no hint of where he’d gone.

Because it would not end like this. He would not _let_ it.

He was God, and his will unquestioned-

_“You’re just a pathetic little boy, trying to run from the stupid mistakes he’s made.”_

He bent his head to the screaming ant’s neck, and feasted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **FOOTNOTES AND TRANSLATIONS**  
>  *I have exactly zero patience for sexism, transphobia, and sexual harassment/invasion of women's privacy being used as comedy, and this story will reflect that. Sanji's getting the figurative boot to the ass, and I've found that he is infinitely more likable.
> 
>  **Et cantant venti** – _Sermo_ ; spell: Translated, means something like “they sung with the wind”.
> 
>  **Cantáte, O lucem mundans** – _Sermo_ ; spell: Translated, means something like ‘Sing, oh cleansing light’. High-level spell, used to purify those corrupted irrevocably by Daemons.
> 
>  **-raā** – _Tējavī_ ; title: Means “queen” when translated into the Common Tongue. Used primarily for upper mid-to-high ranking Daemons. Used when speaking of the Queen of the Daemons.


	32. A Song Heard Through The Centuries

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is a battle to be won, a monster to kill, and a price to be paid.

* * *

**KELLY**

They arrived to chaos.

Kelly, Erin, Conis, and Nami were naturally the least affected by the trip, followed by Sanji, Usopp, and the Shandians. Robin and Chopper had nearly dropped to their knees, thoroughly winded. Shere and Gin curled up tight around them, allowing the two Devil Fruit users to rest against their backs.

They would be fine, but the way the magic (even neutral, protected sigils designed for usage around people with Devil Fruits) interacted with their bodies would leave them quite rattled.

But – as Erin explained it – it could have been much worse. Magic did not like most Devil Fruits as they existed now, after all.

In the beginning, Erin had explained to Kelly in a hurried tone, Devil Fruits had been created by the Gods to give certain humans the right to essentially take magic into their own bodies, granting them power akin to Magic, and making it so that their children would be open to inheriting actual magic as well. It was a gift to those who were loyal, or did great things.

But then Daemons got involved, and, well.

Magic stopped responding to those with Devil Fruits as Daemons corrupted the fruits and fed them to the willing (and those not so). The goddesses themselves withdrew their grace, with Jal delivering the greatest blow of them all – the banishment from the oceans. The curse of the Devil Fruits.

_The waters will reclaim the corrupt._

Kelly shook her head, and focused on what lay ahead.

The Giant Jack was half-teetering on its hinges, and the snake lay dead – or near enough for it not to matter – before it. Lightning slashed across the sky, and the screams were just beginning. Enel was using the corrupted powers gifted to him by the Daemons to burn his bridges behind him, before he escaped to the moon.

Kelly looked to the sky, and saw the Ark slowly gaining height, raining lightning as it did. As she did, she caught sight a tiny figure pulling along an immense golden orb up the side of the half-broken Jack.

How in the hell had Luffy gotten up there so quickly? Canon had told her nothing about this-

She shook her head again, dispelling that useless thought. Hadn’t she learned her lesson by now? _Canon meant nothing_ , beyond a thin outline of each island the Straw Hats would land on, and what events _might_ happen, and even _that_ was unsure.

Luffy was going to face a still heavily corrupted Enel ahead of schedule – without Nami and the waver to get back up the Giant Jack if anything went wrong. She had wanted to stay out of it so that Luffy could get the pleasure of killing the bastard…but (and the sudden thought chilled her) _could_ he?

Could he face Enel – a desperate, maddened Enel driven to escape the Daemons, with a Devil Fruit given corrupted power _by_ Daemons – and win?

Nami was here – and so were Aisa, Wiper, Gan Fall, and Zoro and Gin as well she saw, as the Shandians converged on them – and help was a long way away from Luffy. There would be no lucky last minute save by a courageous girl in a waver now, if Luffy got blasted off the Giant Jack.

Tiny flickering sparks of wrongness emerged high above. Enel was working some sort of Daemon foulness, and it was headed right towards Luffy. A last resort. A last resort that would work, because Luffy did not know how to fight even the half-shades of a corrupted human – much less anything else Enel could pull out of his ass. Any other last _last_ resorts.

Kelly didn’t know for sure, but she doubted very much that Luffy could get past the wights and Enel’s corrupted lightning. He was strong, yes, and in the world she had known he had been The Protagonist.

But this was not a manga.

She’d never considered the idea that Luffy could perish. In the world she’d remembered, it was unthinkable. Monkey D. Luffy, dead? The thought was ludicrous, if at least for the immense Plot Armor he wore.

But this was not the world she’d remembered. Here, Luffy could very well die.

And _that_ …

Kelly tore her black t-shirt off and rolled her shoulders, sending magic coiling through them. She felt good, felt whole and healthy in a way she hadn’t since well before Aratuck, though she would be careful to keep her Magic tucked away, so she wouldn’t hurt Luffy. It would be hard.

What had Gin said, long, long ago, on the island where Shere had been born?

_-… “Your Magic is strong, Mistress, but it is_ uncontrolled _. Training – the Rokushiki will help – will give you some control over it, but you will need many, many years before you even begin to master a fraction of it.”…-_

Kelly did not think of that ‘many, many years’ Gin had spoken of, because at this moment she did not have them. Her magic was-

Her magic was not something of the mortal world, not like that of any Magi she’d met before (except possibly for Erin). Nephele had called her of Jal, and Kelly had never been religious, but she’d felt the touch of-of _something_ on her, when she’d changed the pillars.

Her magic could very easily consume her.

…But she would control it.

Because Luffy needed her help.

Luffy needed _her_.

“Conis! Erin!” Her voice cut through the babbling of the Shandians and the Straw Hats, and her sister Magi turned their attention to her. “Watch them. Make sure Enel sends no mischief this way while I’m busy.”

She would be very, very surprised if Enel did not have traps or ways of reaching new heights of that awful power. And now, at the very end of it, she had no doubt that Enel would use them, no matter the consequences.

“Busy?” Conis asked.

“Luffy needs some help to get past Enel’s defenses,” Kelly said, and the earth began to shake under her feet as magic _rippled_. “I’ll be going to help. None of you are as fast as I, and none of you are strong enough, so don’t argue.”

Erin’s hands were steady, even as her eyes shone with quick flashes of fear.

“Hold the line?” Kelly asked her, like they were just children again, playing videogames in her bedroom.

_-…“You’re such a nerd,” Erin said, still a little clingy, still a little soft…-_

Erin smiled, a little quirk of the lips. Then she nodded.

“Be careful,” she said, and Kelly knew that Erin wasn’t just talking about _Kelly_ staying safe. The magic that curled under Erin’s skin was tightly leashed, allowed to flow but at the pace of the Magi it inhabited.

Kelly’s Magic was like oceans, and as deep as them too. Not once had she ever sought to control them beyond the techniques Gin had taught her. And even that hadn’t been the Magic true and deep inside her, simply the Magic in the world around her.

Most Magi had shreds of magic in them, and could use that magic to call to what was in the world. Some Magi, like Erin, had even greater amounts of magic in them.

But Kelly had far, far more than what was in the world around her. _Far_ more, now that she looked deep.

It was like looking into the ocean and watching the murky depths far below her toes and knowing that she wasn’t seeing even a small shred of what the ocean truly was.

And that terrified her, even as she fought for calm. She felt young and _scared_ , like the time she’d channeled lightning while fleeing the Daemons, leaving her with burns on her wrists that discolored even the scales that clung around that area.

She didn’t like using her magic beyond shreds of it, because it could so easily consume her – without the barrier she’d been given when changing the pillars. She didn’t like looking deep and pulling it free-

But.

_Luffy_.

Kelly breathed in, and out. In, and out. In with the tides, out with the ocean.

Gin and Shere pulled back and away from the roar of magic in her veins by instinct. Kelly opened her eyes, and felt them _burn_.

Then-

“ ** _Soru!_** ”

The earth vanished, crumbling beneath her feet. When next she touched down, it was on the once-sturdy surface of the wobbling Giant Jack. Then she was gone again, landing only for the briefest of seconds before touching off again.

Magic poured through her like seawater through her veins, and she felt gloriously, wondrously alive-

She felt then other presences, twisted wights, take shape behind her, below her, but she had to trust that Erin and Conis and her familiars could protect the Shandians and the Straw Hats.

Her magic thundered in her veins as she slammed into the first of the wights coming for Luffy. It was a beastly thing, like a Thrall but ethereal, given substance only when her magic lashed out like a sword, slicing it into shreds.

“Ciel!” Luffy’s voice was clear, even over the whistling wind.

“Need some help, Rubberband Man?” Kelly asked as Luffy dug his heels into the Jack’s side, balancing beside her. His smile was etched at the edges with real anger.

She snagged her claws in the front of his shirt, and barely budged as the immense golden orb attached to his hand strained, nearly pulling him off his feet again.

“I’m going to kick Enel’s ass,” Luffy said, and his eyes were hard. “He made Aisa cry.”

There was a story there, different from what she knew, but no time to get it out of him. “You’ll need help getting up to him, and getting past those beasts of his,” Kelly said, looking up at the capering ghosts, and the lightning beyond that.

Enel’s laughter was faint on the rushing winds, faint and foul. He was cooking something.

“Luffy,” Kelly said, and Luffy looked at her. Just barely shy of seventeen, with eyes like iron, and that hat hanging around his neck. His was a look that could conquer kingdoms, if he set his mind to it.

_Huh_ , she thought.

And the fear inside her calmed, as her magic did.

“Luffy,” she said again. “He has to die, for all that he’s done.”

He nodded and something settled in her stomach.

“Piggyback, Luffy, but make sure not to touch my bare flesh. I’ll get us past the ghosts, and we’ll deal with Enel. _Permanently_.”

Luffy’s smile was just as wide and just as physics-breaking as it ever was in canon. But Kelly had to admit that she’d never thought the same gesture in canon so resembled a shark’s grin, as it did now.

But strangely enough, it was a comfort all the same.

* * *

**WIPER**

Wiper fought, feeling Conis’s and Erin’s magic coiling around his weapon as he did. His arms burned.

The wights and reanimated dead things Enel had called to kill them screeched, desiccated teeth clacking with hunger. Distantly, he could still hear the screams of the people on Angel Island and the other towns as lightning poured from the skies.

He did not like the land-stealers.

But they did not deserve to die like that.

He heard their screams. Maybe there were even some of his kin among the land-stealers, from those who had been taken from them like Aegle’s daughters had, forced to sire children.

Children like Conis.

He beheaded a cackling skeleton as the Blue Sea dweller with a foot of flame smashed through a second, dancing alongside the two of the Snake’s familiars. Wiper corrected his thoughts when he saw how protective the two Familiars were over the man, and how he seemed to move in unconscious concert with them.

A mate to the Snake Magi who’d gone to confront Enel, then? Perhaps not married yet, but certainly bound in some form or fashion. Or did Magi of the Blue Sea have different customs than the Magi of the Sky?

He dismissed the thought as frivolous when Laki’s back met his, his fellow warrior shuddering for breath as she danced with her spear. _Focus_ , he could almost imagine Agda saying to him.

Normally he would have hated that a Blue Sea Dweller and a Magi not of his own kin were taking his own vengeance from him, but-

The Snake Lord had given back Erin to them. The Snake Lord had saved Conis’s life when he could not, even it burned his pride to know that he could not have done the same. And the Blue Sea Dweller – that _Monkey_ Aisa had spoken of, who’d fought tiny wights of Enel in the belly of the dead snake to protect her - had promised to kill Enel not only for Aisa, but to do so in such a way as to send word to the seas below.

To the descendant of Nephele and Noland.

_-…“Montblanc Cricket, Wiper,” Erin had said when she’d drawn him aside, before the Snake Lord had taken to the skies. “That’s his name. The son twice times over of Noland and Nephele. Luffy comes as his messenger, seeking the truth of our people.”…-_

Noland had never stopped searching for them. Neither had his daughters, nor their daughters, nor their sons. And now these pirates had come to find them, at the behest of Noland’s blood, bringing a Magi of unparalleled strength to seek vengeance and the truth.

He could forgive the Blue Sea Dwellers for taking his vengeance in light of that, Wiper thought.

He could.

* * *

**ENEL**

Enel watched the world burn, and laughed and laughed and _laughed_ -

“You’re a fool,” said a voice behind him, and his head whipped around.

A woman stood there, blond hair flying free. She wore simple white robes that fluttered in the wind.

“You’re dead,” he whispered, still chuckling.

She looked at him, with dark eyes that had been once been like his.

“Maybe so,” she said, still calm. “But you are still a fool. And you will still fall.”

The laugh that bubbled up in him was no longer one of triumph, but desperation.

“No one can stop me,” he hissed, biting it down. “Not even you!”

Lightning cracked out, through the space where the ghost’s head once was. The light faded, leaving only a scorched mark on the wood.

“So foolish.” Enel whirled, to see the ghost now sitting on the railing of the Ark.

He breathed heavily, shaking and failing to hide it.

“Do you hear the screams?”

“Be quiet!”

She turned to look at him, and he thought wildly that this was how she had looked before him. Proudly the daughter of ancients. Proudly a cursed Magi, even as weak of one as she had been.

“Do you see them coming? The Magi and the King?”

Then she was there, right in front of him, and he staggered back-

“Do you see your death? **_Because I do_**.”

Lightning smashed out, but still the ghost lingered, and Enel turned away (ran away).

He could feel it now, that rolling strength and deadly rage. No, no, no, he thought. Not now. He could hear the screams, and they were so loud, so piercing, such a distraction, the damned ants-

The bell that rested in the depths of the Ark gleamed as he went to it. He pulled the black stones embedded in its surface off (the gifts he had been given to cement his power, once he’d come here after his conquest) and carried them up to the deck, not seeing how the bell turned from a dull brass to its gleaming gold as he did.

Where were the ants, they should have done this instead of him–the ants were dead, to satiate his own hunger, or they screamed below, so loud and _annoying_.

Six black stones, still shining with power. The backbone of his family’s dominance in the skies. There had once been sixteen, though most of the rest had shattered in the Magi’s rage. But six would be enough to make the noise _stop_.

Maybe the ghost would be quiet then, too.

“So foolish, my son,” his mother whispered, and he dug his fingers into the surface of the pulsing hearts.

Lightning - white and jagged and smelling like blood and gore - consumed him.

And then the world was gone.

(But not her voice. No, never her voice.)

* * *

**KELLY**

There was a flash, the smell of ozone – _“Luffy, close your eyes!”_ – and then a noise.

Kelly would never forget that noise as long as she lived.

It was like thunder, like the squelching of a drain lifted, like a thousand screams suddenly silenced, like the crumbling of earth, the sound of the void of space.

Lightning flared, brighter and more deadly than the sun, and when Kelly’s vision cleared-

_Gods be good_ , she thought, horrified. Luffy made a pained sound, and she did not question how he knew what had happened just as she did.

Angel Island was gone.

It was a missing space in the recovering magic of Skypiea. The Magi could feel the magic screaming, the space where the people of Angel Island had once been was seeping raw, a bitter wound that made her stagger.

There was more laughter now, twice as loud and twice as mad, and more lightning began to fall, and _things_ began to stalk the island, awoken from deep, things that had been hidden from the range of the blast Kelly had unleashed. They were like wights, but not. They walked, they consumed, they _feasted_ , on everything that lived and breathed.

_Where the_ hell _did he get that sort of power?_ Kelly thought, terrified. _I thought only Daemons could wake those sort of twisted golems!_

There were other islands burning now (the ones surrounding where Angel Island had once been), other settlements collapsing, and more people who were dying. She could hear their screams as Enel burned the last of his bridges.

Only the Shandian encampment was not in flames by this point, but Kelly could feel the slow, inexorable march of that relentless _hunger_ towards the shields.

Luffy snarled like a wolf in her ear, and that pulled her out of her horror.

They couldn’t do anything for the people of Skypiea, not now. Well, maybe _she_ could, but that would leave Luffy alone to face Enel, and that wasn’t an option.

She couldn’t help Angel Island. It and its people were beyond whatever help she could have given. But if she could kill Enel, maybe she could keep the rest of the humans on Skypiea stay alive. Maybe.

“Luffy, hold-”

There was a screeching noise, another sound of corrupted thunder. Her Magic shuddered up and out, a blue-white sphere winking into sight just as the bolt of lightning sheered through the air towards them-

-And bypassed them completely?

_What?_

Kelly blinked as her shield faded away. What had Enel been-

The Giant Jack groaned, and her heart leapt up into her throat as it lurched and began to fall.

_Stupid!_ The Magi thought, as Luffy let out a screech of his own. _He was aiming for the beanstalk!_

She lost her footing as the Jack began to drop, pinwheeling desperately. Her magic shot out in wild instinct, and she only just managed to drag it back before it lashed out at Luffy.

_Fuck, control, control, control!_

It was like trying to use a pair of paper reins to control a tidal wave. The full depth of her Magic loomed up like the endless ocean, threatening to swamp her.

_Fuck, do something, do something!_

They needed to fly, but she had her hands full with keeping the relentless tide back.

Because if she let go, even for a second, Luffy was as good as dead. Her magic would snap out and turn him to ash.

The Jack dropped, and they were falling, toppling through the air. And here, there was no courageous girl with a waver for a last minute rescue. And even if there’d been, Nami never could have reached them in time.

Enel’s laughter rang in the Magi’s ears, and Kelly wanted to howl with fury.

_No!_

**_Not like this!_ **

Luffy’s scream burned her ears as she grappled desperately, reaching, reaching-

Then, a sound.

Kelly would never have been able to precisely describe that sound – maybe like a spoon tapping the edge of a glass, only the ringing was drawn out for an impossibly long note? Maybe the wind whistling through a series of empty hallways?

But it was there, growing louder and louder, backed by a rumble that was not the twisted sound of the thunder and lightning Enel commanded.

She heard a voice in her head, magic she recognized.

_Get a shield up around Luffy!_

It was Erin’s voice, but with the winds twisting through it, it was like she was standing on a hilltop and listening to Erin speaking in her ear-

Kelly reacted instinctively, letting the magic that wasn’t hers (wasn’t it?) snap out. Signs and sigils flashed out around her eyes, blinding her, and-

Something _roared_.

Endless and everlasting, something _awoke_ from the depths of the Vearth and Skypiea both. Something rose, magic deep and all-consuming.

Kelly’s feet hit something that felt like clouds, Luffy grunted, but he kept his grip around her. The golden ball hit something and bounced, and slowly they began to rise.

Luffy made an awed sound.

“Ciel! Look!”

Kelly’s eyes shot open – when had she closed them? – as they began to move both forward and still higher. They stood on the palm of a hand made of solid wind and _magic_.

She looked even further up, and saw a giant’s head looming high above.

“Gods be good,” she breathed.

A giantess, ethereal but rendered solid by the beating hearts twinned within it and the magic they had called, loomed tall and unyielding above them. The giantess was burning with a warm golden light – no, she _was_ the golden light, with black eyes that shone with the light of a thousand stars, space illuminated with the very hints of what might have been the Big Bang.

Kelly knew she was crying, as Magic and light and something warm, like a mother’s love, reached out and wrapped around them both. Luffy giggled helplessly in her ear.

“Forward, Giant!” he yelled, sounding like a little boy commanding a toy soldier.

“Luffy!” Kelly gasped out, trying for a reprimand and falling short in her helpless joy.

Laughter rang through the skies, Erin’s and Conis’s both, twined together like they had twined together to provide the foundation for Skypiea’s final defense.

**We march** , the giantess sang to them.

“Forward!” Luffy cried out, still laughing. Kelly didn’t bother to wipe her tears away.

This was Magic beyond her, but was also so intrinsic to some deep part of her, some part of her hidden by that murky ocean that was her power, that she couldn’t help but know what it was.

It was a call to the gods for help given form. It was a binding promise to the land of Skypiea itself in return for the power to protect it, to protect every person on that island, even if it meant their lives.

This was magic that could consume Erin and Conis both, Kelly knew. And it likely would.

_So make it count_ , she thought.

Luffy’s grip tightened around her, and Kelly turned her gaze up, towards the Ark. Where Enel was.

_Make it count, Kelly._

* * *

**WIPER**

The new monsters Enel’s madness had summoned marched inexorably towards them, and Wiper could feel Conis’s and Erin’s magic beginning to waver as the ever-encroaching tide of enemies refused to be turned back. The Familiars of the Snake Lord were wavering as well, panting for breath in between each snarl of fury.

Wiper could hear the people screaming on the islands surrounding the gaping wound where Angel Island had once been, and the horror would have consumed him if he was less disciplined.

They were fighting a losing battle.

Agda had taught him well. Wiper had his pride, but he knew when there was a fight he could not hope to prolong without losing not only his own life, but the lives of all of his warriors and comrades as well.

_Your pride is nothing compared to the lives of your family and your people,_ she’d told him. _Do not carelessly throw your pride away, but do not cling so tightly you would sacrifice those you will one day protect for it._

Had this been any other fight, any skirmish against Enel’s monsters, any other raid that brought them up against a foe with superior numbers, he would have taken his warriors and retreated.

_You are worth more to your tribe alive than you are dead,_ Agda had whispered in his ear two days before the monsters had killed her. _You are worth more, and so are your fellows._

But there was nowhere to go now. If they ran, the monsters would simply follow, all the way to the very borders of the great island. They would follow their hunger until the humans and Magi alike collapsed.

He could not protect his people, Wiper knew. They could not retreat, and they could not win.

But he forced his spear to move faster, as a bleeding and staggering Mayushika was dragged out of Genbo’s grip and pulled screaming into the maw of a beast with a hundred eyes. He kept fighting.

What else could he do?

“Erin!” Coni’s voice drew him out of the battle-fury he’d sunk into, and a shield made of ethereal power sprang into life between the remaining fighters and the monsters capering outside.

Wiper spared a look towards the two Magi of his tribe huddled together, speaking furiously in the language of their people. Erin’s eyes were wide as Conis whispered to her, and her protests died away as Conis clasped her hands.

“Is there no other option?” Erin asked her, closing her eyes.

“Can you think of something? Because I cannot,” Conis replied, her mouth trembling. But her spine was straight, and her bearing proud.

There was another sound of Enel’s lightning, like the sound that had preceded the annihilation of Angel Island and the march of the monsters. One of the Blue Sea Dwellers cried out as the Giant Jack began to fall.

The Snake Lord’s Familiars screamed as, far in the distance, the two specks that denoted Snakeman and Blue Sea Dweller began to topple alongside the immense plant.

Grief struck through him, with rage and horror alongside it. They had lost the city of their people, the Vearth upon which they had lived.

Now the Jack would fall, the tree before which Nephele had asked Calgara to watch over Aegle.

“Conis, with me!” Erin said, her voice full of fear.

He turned again, to see Conis watching him.

She looked at him, and Wiper felt the breath inside his lungs freeze to solid ice as she smiled, weary and determined and apologetic all at once.

_-…Agda smiles at him, as though asking for his forgiveness in the same motion as she asks him to understand. Then she turns, and walks out to the first of the totems protecting their village, even while the horde approaches…-_

Then she pressed her forehead against Erin’s and Magic flared.

And Wiper knew.

“No,” he said. “Conis, _no_ -”

Hands wrapped around him, and he was dragged back by the eldest of the women who had come from the Blue Sea, the one with the Devil Fruit. She held him as easily as she might a small child, with the mutant limbs halting his movement as Conis and Erin began to speak in their ancient language.

“Damn you, let me go!” he barked.

“It is her choice,” the woman said quietly. “It is her choice, to defend her home and her hearth and the one she loves, even if it means her death.”

Terror spiked through his blood.

“Conis!”

Again and again he would fail. Again and again he would lose all that he loved.

_-…“Are you going to give it to her?” Braham asks, as Wiper holds the bracelet up to his eye, looking carefully at the work he has done. He glares at his friend, and the larger man smiles, holding up his hands._

_“Just a simple question, Wiper. You know no one in this village would raise a brow at you seeking to court the last daughter of Aegle.”_

_Wiper turns his attention back to the bracelet. Conis and he have gained something of a friendship, in the years after her mother died. She is strong, far stronger than he ever thought she was. She was given no choice in the matter._

_“It is a present, for her nameday,” he says, stubborn. “That is all.”_

_Braham sighs, but says nothing to contradict him…-_

Magic surged and keened, and the shield around them buckled. Magic twined between the two Magi, while the reindeer cowered behind the Snakeman’s familiar, and the woman helped hold Wiper back.

He could hear Laki crying in Kamakiri’s arms, even as he struggled. Conis and Erin spoke, their edges blending into each other, their Magic melding and becoming stronger, curling inescapable roots into the ground below their feet.

More and more magic came at their call, dancing and singing around the two Magi.

Wiper could see right through Conis’s body.

For a single moment, Conis looked at him. Her mouth formed the words _forgive me_.

_“Conis!”_

The Magi vanished beneath a wave of magic. The shield shattered. The world went sideways.

And something _roared_.

* * *

**KELLY**

The giant marched, with the two of them still balanced on its palm.

“Ready, Luffy?” Kelly asked, and heard his laugh.

His grip around her tightened, and she could feel his heart beating a steady tempo, where his chest was pressed to her back. And for a moment, a single dizzying moment, she could feel every vein in his body, the flow of his blood, all the way to a pulsing second heart somewhere in his belly.

She saw - again for the quickest of seconds – lights dancing around that strange second heart inside Luffy. Lights that were as blue and endless as the ocean, lights that sometimes danced for _her_ , when she went deep inside herself.

Luffy laughed once more, and she was pulled away from the strange vision. His cheek pressed against hers, and she was struck by how strangely _right_ it felt.

“Forward, Ciel!”

**Go** , Erin and Conis’s voices said. **End this. End the abomination.**

“Hold on, Luffy,” Kelly said, her voice just barely heard over the roaring wind.

She closed her eyes, pulled the Magic up and through her, and breathed deep. She did not worry that Luffy would be affected any more. Her Magic wouldn’t hurt him. It had no reason to hurt him.

Not any longer.

Kelly opened her eyes, and the Magic _sang_.

“Give me a boost!”

Wind rushed past as the giant brought the arm Kelly and Luffy were standing on back. And with a throw that a major league pro would have been proud of, the giant tossed them towards the Ark in a single, smooth movement.

“ _WOOHOO!_ ” Magi and pirate screamed in unison, their voices both brimming with sheer vicious joy.

* * *

**ENEL**

He brought the lightning.

What else could he do?

Enel heard his mother’s laughter behind him, ringing through his ears, even as he became the lightning.

He watched them come, the Magi and the King.

His sisters had spoken of this Magi, he remembered now. Had spoken of a Magi that had been talked about all across their world, for the potency of its blood and the newness of its mind. A godblooded Magi, without the protection one would have normally been afforded.

He brought his hand out, now yellow-black like an infected wound, and a trident appeared, constructed entirely of the same lightning he was now made of.

The Moon awaited. A new place to rebuild his empire, away from any cursed Magi. It would be safe.

_It's not meant for you_ , his mother said, still laughing.

The Magi batted away his strike as though it was an errant wind. The lightning that got past the Magi simply _bounced off_ the pirate on its back.

“Luffy!” The Magi called.

There was a laugh from the pirate, and it merged eerily with the laughter coming from behind Enel.

Desperately, he reached out to the bell and what power remained in it. The pirate twisted the arm stuck to the giant gold sphere.

**_“Gomu Gomu no…”_ **

He would not lose. He could not lose. Not when he was so close.

Enel remembered standing in a dark room, while his mother screamed. Enel remembered bowing his head before the beauty of the Queen, and hearing her praise him. Enel remembered the feeling as she reached her fingers into his chest and turned his lightning black-yellow-gold, and made him stronger than any Devil Fruit user.

Make me proud, little one, she’d said, her face terribly beautiful.

Then he remembered what his mother had said, in a flash that pulled away the edges of the beauty the Queen had worn.

His mother had died with blood on her lips…And an apology. He remembered now.

_I’m sorry I wasn’t strong enough to be your mother,_ she’d whispered. _Forgive me._

He faltered. Just for a second, but it was enough.

**_“…Ougon Rifle!”_ **

Then his world was pain, as both the golden ball and magic slammed into him, knocking him back and down into the bell that awaited in the darkness where he’d kept it.

In the last few moments, he could hear the sound of the Ark splintering, and he could see his mother.

She was no longer laughing. Just watching, framed by the sunlight that reflected off the gold.

Her eyes were the last thing he saw as the Magic ripped him asunder.

* * *

**WIPER**

The bell rang as it fell.

The giant held up its hands, and washed the sky clean for true.

And the sun shone.

His knees hit the ground as the magic faded into the rays of light, into the very ground around him. He could hear people cheering far away. He could hear Kamakiri and Laki mourning as the giant faded, it and those who had created it, bound to the land.

_Conis_ , he thought. _Conis_.

He remembered the two of them sitting together, before the statues of Aegle and Calgara. It had been a peaceful night, with the stars shining and their troubles not so prevalent.

She had reached out her hand to tangle with his, and he had wondered if this was what peace was.

_Conis_ , he thought again.

He remembered thinking that when they were free, he would ask her. He would do things properly. And they would make a life for themselves in that future that would now never come.

The bell’s ringing note sang through the air, all the way down to the sea where Nephele and Noland’s descendants lived.

He hoped they heard it. He hoped they knew that Shandia had never forgotten them.

_-…“For once in my life, I wanted to do something that showed I was worthy of you.”…-_

He closed his eyes, and the burning in them grew agonizing. He clung to the fur of the panther Familiar as it rested its head on his knees, offering comfort. The tiger was doing the same for Kamakiri and Laki.

The payment had been made to Noland and Nephele’s blood. Enel was dead. The sky was free.

_Conis_ , he thought. _Agda._

_I’m sorry._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone wondering where I've been: I'm bone-deep exhausted, work sucks, I've been besieged by idiots and illness alike, and life has generally not been fun recently.
> 
> So, sorry about the wait.
> 
> (I'm really tired, though.)


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